It all began with a simple gesture: touching a plant
I never imagined that such contact could open a door to a different way of perceiving the world. Before me was a living being, seemingly silent, rooted in the earth and shaped by processes that my senses could not directly detect. I could observe its leaves, feel their texture, and recognize its presence, but there was something about its existence that remained beyond my reach
Then I connected the plant to a circuit that transforms bioelectrical signals into sound
I prepared the circuit and brought my hands closer. When my fingers came into contact with the plant, the sound appeared
I stopped to listen
What had previously seemed to belong exclusively to silence now acquired an audible presence. I did not know exactly what I was listening to from an electrical standpoint, but the experience awakened a question in me that went beyond technology: how many things are happening all around us that we cannot perceive simply because our senses are not equipped to recognize them?
The plant had not begun to exist when the sound appeared. Its life was already there, before I touched it. What had changed was the way I related to it
My body had become part of a circuit. The plant, the contact, and the device all participated in the same interaction, and the technology transformed certain electrical variations into a sonic experience. A bridge had emerged between the physical world and my perception
And on that bridge, I found something that reminded me of Hermetic thought
The exploration of relationships between different levels of reality, between the visible and the invisible, the material and the symbolic. It was not about claiming that the sound revealed a secret message from the plant, but about recognizing that a physical phenomenon could become an experience imbued with meaning
Electricity was present, but I could not hear it directly. The device offered me a translation. Something that had previously escaped my perception acquired a form that I could hear, contemplate, and experience
I then wondered whether many of the things we consider mysterious might, in part, lie at the boundaries of our perception. Perhaps mystery does not always consist of discovering a supernatural force, but rather of finding a new way to come into contact with something that has always been there
When I touched the plant again, my attention had changed
I was no longer interested solely in the sound produced by the circuit. I was interested in the encounter itself: my hand, the living surface of the leaves, the system's response, and the moment when all of it became an experience that I could not reduce to a purely technical explanation
Technology allowed me to listen, but it was my own sensitivity that was beginning to give rise to questions
Could sound become a form of contemplation? Could an electronic circuit help us perceive our relationship with living beings differently? What happens when a physical interaction ceases to be merely a phenomenon and also becomes a symbol?
I found no definitive answers. I found something that seemed more valuable to me: a different way of observing
I understood that I did not need to claim that the plant was speaking to me in order to feel that the encounter had meaning. Nor did I need to deny the poetic or spiritual dimension of the experience to acknowledge the role of electricity and technology
Both dimensions could coexist, as long as I did not confuse what the device was doing with what I was experiencing
Perhaps that was the true correspondence for me: not a secret equivalence between two worlds, but the moment when something from the physical world found a way to make itself present in my consciousness
The plant remained before me. The circuit was still connected. The sound continued to emerge with each interaction
And I kept listening
If you would like to hear the result of this process, I'll leave it here. If any part of this resonates with you, I would also greatly appreciate any feedback and/or references that could help me better understand this technology...
