Open Studio – Is a plant a dangerous place to put a memory?

As part of the OpenArtFolke art festival in September 2024, Ruth installed an Open Studio.
She wanted to show what a contemporary artist’s studio can be like. Ruth is a multi-media, ‘post-studio’ artist, who develops her work mostly at a desk (at home) using a laptop and digital tools. The Workshop – a shared office space – seemed an appropriate space to showcase her practice. Each desk was used to display part of her studio practice, earlier work and reference material.

Experimentation

Experimentation is a key part of how Ruth develops a piece of work. Usually this process is performed at her desk at home, but during the open studio, visitors could be part of the experimentation.

At the time of the art festival, Ruth was experimenting with using plant bio-data to create music. So she invited visitors to take part by telling a plant a message (e.g. a memory, dream or secret), often while touching the plant. Ruth recorded the music as they interacted with the plants. They the visitor took their plant home as a gift. After the festival Ruth sent each participant the track specific to their plant and interaction as a memory of that interaction.

Here below are some of the tracks produced and it is evident, in most cases, that the human interaction caused changes in the plant data and the music generated from the data.