981: PlantWave By Data Garden - The Tech That Enables Plants To Sing!

The Tech Talks Daily Podcast

You know how it feels to go on a hike or be surrounded by nature. You come out more relaxed, refreshed, and energized. Imagine if you could recreate the feeling of being immersed in a forest through music.

Thanks to PlantWave, this experience will soon be available. With PlantWave, your phone becomes a way for you to connect to nature, rather than feeling separate from it. PlantWave turns a plants’ biorhythms into music.

Just attach two sensors to a plant’s leaves and PlantWave connects wirelessly to an iOS or Android device running our app. The app has instruments we’ve built for plants to play.

Digital technology has made life easier in many ways, however, as we’ve advanced technologically, we’ve welcomed increased stress and distraction into our lives. — JOE PATITUCCI / FOUNDER

PlantWave detects slight electrical variations in a plant via two electrodes placed on the leaves. These variations are graphed as a wave, which we translate into pitch messages or notes that are routed to play instruments.

Other characteristics of the wave are translated into messages that give a plant the ability to change the textural qualities of those sounds. The result is a continuous stream of pleasing music that gives you a sonic window into the secret life of plants.

Data Garden is building a bridge from a world of digital distractions to a life of physical presence. — JOE PATITUCCI / FOUNDER

Jon Shapiro produces biofeedback music performances and built an online learning platform for music education. He led in developing the supply and fulfillment chains for their previous product, MIDI Sprout. He continues to lead software development and joins me onto the Tech Talks Daily Podcast.

We talk about the PlantWave Kickstarter campaign, and I also try and convince Jon to take PlantWave and the Data Garden Quartet to the Greenfields at next year's Glastonbury Festival.