Akousmaflore2008 / Visual audible InstallationScenocosme (Grégory Lasserre & Anaïs met den Ancxt)  Description: the interactive garden Akousmaflore is a small garden composed of living musical plants, which react to human gestures and to gentle contact. Each plant reacts in a different way to contact or warmth by producing a specific sound. The plant "language" or song occurs through touch and the close proximity of the spectator. Our invisible electrical aura acts on the plant branches and encourages them to react: a plant concert is created Alliance between nature and digital technology In our artwork, we create hybrids between plants and digital technology. Plants are natural sensors for various energy flows. Digital technologies permit us to establish a relationship between plants and sound. We display the effects of random data flow and plant interaction. The data is modified as the spectator meanders around and touches the installation, resulting in a random musical universe. Audience gestures and movements generate sound effects and changes in the texture of the sound. Approach: invisible design Our body continually produces an electrical and heat aura, which cannot be felt. This phenomenon exists in the environment immediately surrounding us. In our research, the "design of the invisible", our approach is to animate that which we cannot detect. Mixing reality with imagination, we propose a sensory experience that encourages us to think about our relationship with other living things and with energy. Indoor plants can have an ambiguous existence that swings between decorative object and living being. It is said that "inanimate objects" can react when they receive human attention. Through Akousmaflore, plants let us know about their existence by a scream, a melody or an acoustical vibration. Anaïs met den Ancxt (born 1981) graduated from the University of Lyon in Anthropology, from the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Lyon, and from the Ecole Supérieure d'Art et de Design of St Etienne. Grégory Lasserre (born 1976) studied Computer Science and Electronics and graduated as a Master in Multimedia. Since 2002, he has been creating interactive artwork as a digital artist. Together, they use interactive art, music and architecture in order to create evolutionary artwork capable of further interactivity. Through multiple forms of expression, they invite the spectator to occupy the centre of musical or choreographic collective performances. Their installation offers moments of meeting and exchange and immerses the spectators in favourable spaces via daydream-like experiences stimulated by by significant experiments with the body: SphèrAléas, Alsos*, Akousmaflore, Ombres incandescentes, Kimapetra. Since 2004, they have exhibited their artworks at BIACS3 - International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville and in many art centers and digital art festivals (Via, Exit, Seconde Nature, Mal au Pixel, Scopitone, Arborescence, ACM2007, Streamfest, Share, Kibla Multimedia Center) · www.scenocosme.com/  © Photo: Scenocosme Scenocosme (Grégory Lasserre, Anaïs Met den Ancxt), Akousmaflore, 2008, Visual audible Installation PC, audio system, plants on a rack, interactive sound garden, loaned by the artists |