Manchester based musicians ‘Bionic and the Wires’ have invented a machine (the world’s first?) that enables a living plant to play a real live musical instrument. The group performs their first performance with a plant and its specially made bionic arms at the Castlefield Viaduct on 20th April.
Bionic and the Wires are a Manchester based collective that create electronic music with plants. Their compositions combine botanical rhythms with atmospheric textures and soundscapes created by synthesisers. The music explores the interplay between plants and music and encourages new ways of thinking about the natural world. Bionic and the Wires consists of Andy Kidd on the keyboard and synthesizer and Jon Ross on the plants.
All plants create electrical bio-signals from natural processes like photosynthesis. Bionic and the Wires attach sensors to the plant leaves to capture these pulses which are transformed by music making equipment into electricity to power robotic plant ‘arms’. The machine builds on inventions such as the Plantwave device that have been around for a few years, but they’ve
taken it to a new level so the plant can literally play an instrument. As part of their performance they have taught the plant how to play a steel handpan drum and even a violin
Jon from Bionic and the Wires said: “we’ve spent many months researching and developing the new bionic robot arms. It’s exciting to think that with this invention we may have opened up the opportunity for a whole new genre of music. Maybe it’s called bionica!?”
