Copy and paste of an article written for the facebook page of Le Chant des Plantes (the song of the plants) (yes, it has one 😮 … still) .
Someone had asked me for this information… so here it is. The more of us there are using these devices and running experiments on language, the greater the progress should be. (Editor’s note: I was planning at the time to run an experiment with schools to teach plants to write, and to check whether the writing program I had built in MIDI with the U1 device was better used by the plants. All it took was putting plants in first, second and third grade classrooms and associating them with the learning, even without saying it out loud… this was 2016 🙁 The project never came to anything )
• First, you will need the Devodama U1 device from Music of the Plants created by the Damanhur community or, in France, from the Pépinière Botanique et Plantarium de Gaujacq at a price of 750 euros. (Editor’s note – In 2016, it was 710 euros)
• Music production software, available for PC and MAC (personally I work in Logic Pro… Mac obliges): Ableton Live but only in the Suite version, otherwise you will have no sampler. And the sampler is the heart of our work, since it is what lets you build keyboards with sounds you have recorded or gathered yourself. (I know it a little on mac and it is very intuitive) There is a sampler in the suite version (499 euros) https://www.ableton.com/en/shop/
• Then to work the MIDI over, it gets complicated (to make it write for instance, or to trigger actions: open, close itunes, etc.) personally I use Bome MIDI translator Pro (59 euros)If you need it, I can send you my bipmap file with the Azertyuiop keyboard for writing.https://www.bome.com/products/miditranslator/purchase
• Then, the most important part and the cheapest ;), is the MIDI-USB cable that lets the U1 device, which has a MIDI output, talk to your computer. Personally I have the Uno from M Audio, USB MIDI (5 pin DIN) Output/input, which costs 29 euros.
• For those on mac, the sampler is the EXS 24 in Logic Pro x, which can also be used with Mainstage, sold along with it for 199.99 €… For once Mac Users pay less. On top of that the application has an incredible sound bank !!! http://www.apple.com/fr/logic-pro/
Today, in 2020, if I could change all of this to run it under linux with open source and free software, I would. I would have all of it but at a free price and with software whose workings and nature I know. But I do not have a machine running linux (the next one? 😉 ) and rebuilding a whole set that works floors me in advance.
Besides that, since this message was written, Damanhur has released a device twice as cheap, the Bamboo. It is portable and can therefore come with you on walks without needing anything other than this device, which has a built-in speaker. HOWEVER, you have to understand that the stability of the signal on the Bamboo is nowhere near equivalent to that of the U1. So if you want to run experiments with protocols, using the bamboo will make your experiments complicated. And for the plant too. That said, I only had the test version in my hands, and I had a lot of fun with it, but it never made me want to buy one, given how much my work with the device demands the greatest possible stability in the electrical signals.
LET ME REPEAT HERE that the Damanhur devices are not based on the plant’s internal electricity, nor on its “inner sound”, but on the plant’s RESISTIVITY, meaning that it sends an electrical signal into the plant and translates into MIDI sound the time the signal takes to come back. So the plant has to make movements of lymph to trigger the device. These movements may be necessary to the plant simply in order to live, but, from what I have experienced of it, I would say it can make those movements for the sole purpose of communicating with us. All the loose talk you hear about the device comes from the fact that few people have looked into the patent for the device, which explains this very clearly.
