Klinkerdin Arts Salon


Klinkerdin Arts Salon is a regular art showcase where different artists present their latest work to their peers and other audience, from poetry to visual arts to live performance.

On Saturday 10th of June 2023, Klinkerdin will present a very special event in The Loft at Common Ground Bray. Plants in Concert shall be part of the Bord Bia Bloom Festival 2023.

Klinkerdin Arts Salon Presents

Plants in Concert

Saturday 10th June 2023

3pm to 10pm

The Loft at Common Ground Bray

Plants in Concert

A postcard garden by Klinkerdin Arts Salon & Edible Bray

Bord Bia Bloom Festival 2023

Plants in Concert is a collaboration between Klinkerdin Arts Salon and Edible Bray, a public trail of community gardens in Bray. Together they have created a horticultural sound art installation where we listen to plants’ internal movements. Plants gurgle, stretch and turn. We hear.

How can we hear this? One of the plants in the garden has sensors attached, which allows reading its electromagnetic impulses, like a heart monitor, with a midisprout gadget translating them into sound. The sounds have been programmed and finetuned by musician Ruaidhrí O’Sullivan. During Bord Bia Bloom Festival 2023, this plant music is streamed and accessible via a QR code.

This multi-sensory experience enables you to see, smell the plants and hear their voices as they grow and respond to their environment. A second QR code links to an audio description of all the garden’s layout. It allows the garden to be accessible to visually impaired people. Indeed it may be an enjoyable addition to anybody’s experience.

LINKS

http://www.klinkerdin.com/

www.commongroundbray.com          @ediblebray

@commongroundbray                        @common_ground_clh_ww

www.braytidytowns.com                    @showingup_irl

FAQ

Who are you?

The organising team are members of Common Ground Bray and their sister organisations Klinkerdin Arts Salon and Edible Bray. The larger team includes volunteers from Common Ground Community-Led Housing (CGCLH), Bray Tidy Towns and Showing Up. All of us tend to community gardens together and develop side projects such as Plants in Concert.

Edible Bray regularly tends to a trail of edible gardens planted across Bray, open to all to grow and harvest.

Common Ground Community-Led Housing (CGCLH) is a pathfinder project in response to the need of housing and strong, resilient communities. It is also a sister organisation of Common Ground Bray.

Common Ground Bray is a co-operative, community-based group which values inclusion and co-operative, mindful and ecological approaches. It is a grass-roots organisation where people can come with an idea to contribute and feel supported to just try.

Bray Tidy Towns run multiple projects in Bray, including public planting for pollinators, organising beach clean ups and other activities.

Showing Up are an organisation offering in-person and online spaces for connecting with others and mindfully engaging with some of the most difficult issues facing our world.

So many organisations for such a small garden?

Yes, you can call it community-building, place-making, joining the dots, doing fun things together.

Where are the materials sourced?

The terracotta pots are all borrowed from our gardens and our friends’ gardens.

Plenty of the compost and leaf mould came from an open neighbourhood leaf pile.

The plants were most grown from seed or borrowed from some of our gardens.

Future Forests donated a gorgeous fig tree.

The wood for the stage was mostly scavenged and donated by Edible Bray members.

The midisprout device to listen to the plants we bought.

Other electronic gadgets were borrowed.

Does this technology hurt the plant?

No. Like a heart monitor, it captures variations in electromagnetic impulses in the body.

What will you do with the plants after this?

We will give them great homes along Edible Bray’s trail of public edible gardens.

The plants we borrowed we will return.

Did you invent it?

This technology has been about for a few years, well known to electronic musicians.

What is the purpose of this garden?

It is an invitation to listen.

Is that a poem on the back wall of the garden?

It is, by writer Ríos Ribes, and it goes like this:

Ah sibling seedlings

Lay your head on Earth’s belly

Listen with green ears.

Who’s voice is it in the audio description?

Writer Mo Harte worded it and recorded it.

Anything else?

Come and garden with Edible Bray, perform in Klinkerdin Arts Salon, join Bray Tidy Towns beach clean-ups, support Common Ground Community-Led Housing, learn to grow your favourite vegetables, plant some fruit trees. Come for food security, stay for the plant banter.


Sound Artist and Musician Ruaidhri O’Sullivan has come together with Edible Bray , (who create edible community gardens around Bray for everyone to enjoy and eat from), and Klinkerdin Arts Salon to create an horticultural sound art installation called Plants in Concert. This piece premiered at BLOOM 2023 .

Plants take to a wooden stage. They play a syntheseizer via an interface from Spad Electronics which measures the electrical impulses of the plant triggering the choice of pitch and duration played. Ruaidhri has created unique and beautiful sounds for the plants to play. A day of events are taking place to celebrate this amazing project.


3pm : Set-Up takes place and you can see the tech and garden elements put together to create the installation.

4.30pm to 7.00pm : Spend time seeing , smelling and now hearing the music of the plants. Soak up the atmosphere.

7pm : Overview of Sound of Plants Project with Q and A

7.30pm to 8pm : Gardeners Question Time with Hugh Ryder and other Edible Bray Members

8pm : Plant healing demonstration with Eileen O’Sullivan – If you’d like to bring your own plant to heal and/or hook up to the device please bring it along.

8.30pm to 9.30pm : Artistic responses and musical Improvisation with the plants. A collaboration between local musicians and the plants.

9.30pm : Refreshments