UntitledAcoustic Agriculture is a redefining how we think about AI, noise pollution and the biosemiotic relationship between sound and plant life.
Urban noise pollution is a pervasive challenge in our cities, affecting both human well- being and the natural environment. In this project, we explore how sound technology, AI, and hydroponic farming can transform urban agriculture to make cities more livable and sustainable.
To understand the complex soundscape of our cities, we collected a dataset of 100 sounds categorized into urban noise pollution, environmental sounds, natural sounds, and scientific pulses known to influence plant growth.
We recreated these sounds with autoencoder AI architecture as a starting point of our experiments.
The installation consists of 100 hydroponic boxes containing vibrational speakers, custom electronics, and sensors. We can apply sounds directly to the whole plant and track how fast plant is growing by monitoring how it's consuming nutrients from the liquid.
Over the course of our experiments, we are collecting data and growing our custom AI model based on the autoencoder architecture and evolutionary algorithms.
We are measuring nutrient consumption in real-time, and tracking biomass and photosynthetic efficiency at the end of each week to uncover how sound patterns influence plants.
We are also planing to conduct genetic analysis of the plants to gain deeper insights into plant biology.
While being a technological innovation, 'Acoustic Agriculture' is also a biosemiotic exploration into plant acoustics and the essence of communication between species and their environments. It's an AI-symphony created for plants and a model for future urban farming practices: a post-human future where technology and nature not just coexist, but to coevolve.
Credits:
Artist: Helena Nikonole
Video production, sound design: Helena Nikonole
Camera: Pavel Chalupsky, Dmitry Morozov, Frederik de Wilde
Scientific support: Pavel Chalupsky, Mendel University
Technical Assistance: Dmitry Morozov
AI expert: Nikita Prudnikov
Special thanks: Kersnikova Institute, Jurij Krpan, Simon Gmajner, Jure Sajovic Erika Szomolajova, Jana Tomekova and Jan Veselsky