Escuchas Radicales

-radical listening-
David Velez
Festival PARTIDES
Cambrils (Cat)
Sep 30-Oct 1

This installation invites the public to speak to the roots of parsley, strengthening its growth and stimulating mutual wellbeing. For this, the work implements a transducer that amplifies the human voice underground and its reception by the sensitive capillaries of its roots, accompanied by sine waves and sounds of annelids that also serve as food.

Talking to plants is as beneficial for the humans who do it as it is for the plants who listen. Dialogue and closeness with plant species reward us with wellbeing, result of a sensitive phenomenon called biophilia, which, according to biologist Edward O. Wilson, arises as a way of gratitude for the thousands of years of close coevolution that connect our species. . This sensation is manifested with intensity when we have contact with edible species, given the close interspecies collaboration that unites us around horticulture. It is demosntrated in the theories of mental health researcher Helen Esley, for whom cooperative processes in vegetable cultivation are so positive that they present an alternative to psychoanalytic therapy, reducing the risk of experiencing depressive and anxious symptoms.

On the other hand, studies carried out by the Royal Horticultural Society in England (HRS) and the National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology in South Korea suggest that expressions of human affection towards plants communicated through voice has a positive impact on their growth thanks to the effect of the frequencies produced, which open the pores (stomata) allowing better perspiration and respiration, thus improving the absorption of nutrients and water.