As part of the Open 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 ‘desk for hire’ 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.
Throughout the Open Studio, Ruth ran a workshop for visitors to interact directly with plants and listen to plants’ sonic responses to touch.
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 Open Studio, Ruth was experimenting with plant bio-data to create music/sounds. She noticed that touching plants can often effect a change in the sounds. She invited visitors to take part by telling a plant a message (e.g. a memory, dream or secret) while touching the plant. Ruth recorded these interactions. Then 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.
Human-Plant Interaction Music
In these visuals the plants’ tracks can be seen (a well as heard) and in many cases showed the changes following touching. Participants reported a sense of wonder after this experience and anew sense of awareness of plants in our lives.
Ruth Canning 