Artist Project 1 - The Stress Call of the Stinging Nettle
Human beings use many means of communication. Some can be seen (texts, gestures) or heard (spoken words, sounds), but there are also chemical modes, such as the smell of bodily odors.
What if these modes could be translated into one another?
That was exactly what the participants at the conference “Unfolding Value” could experience yesterday. The music played was a part of the artwork The Stress Call of the Stinging Nettle (2008), by the Swedish artist Christine Ödlund, where the chemical signals of a plant (a nettle) was transposed into music.
Yes, plants do communicate, and animals and humans can register that mostly in terms of smell. The odor of flowers is there to attract insects, the particular smell of a Christmas tree is actually there to communicate that it is dying…
Ödlund’s artwork takes its stance in something rather dramatic – the chemical call for help that an individual nettle sends out to other members of its specie when under attack from a particular worm. These calls has been translated by the artist into a musical piece that is beautiful and thought provoking, as well as moving.
You will find an excerpt of the work at Christine Ödlund’s web page.