Music Remembers Us: The Secret Symphony of Plants Revealed

In 2025, an intriguing concept materialized into a tangible musical release. The project, titled The Secret Symphony of Plants, launched at Artpark in New York State, serving as a prime illustration of where scientific inquiry and artistic expression converge harmoniously.

A collaborative team comprising artists and researchers affixed electrodes to various plants situated within the park. They meticulously recorded minuscule shifts in bioelectrical activity in response to environmental stimuli such as light exposure, temperature fluctuations, and physical contact. These captured signals were then translated into MIDI data, which subsequently became the raw material for composers, including Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and conductor Brent Chancellor.

This process culminated in the album The Secret Symphony of Plants, which officially debuted on October 17, 2025. Crucially, this was not merely music inspired by nature; rather, it was music that was fundamentally born alongside nature itself.

It is vital to grasp that the composers did not force the botanical subjects to conform to a pre-existing artistic vision. Instead, they treated the plants’ data streams as an active co-author. In some instances, a plant acted as a subtle generator of rhythm; elsewhere, it introduced unpredictable melodic shifts, or altered the textural density of the composition in direct reaction to subtle changes in its immediate surroundings.

While this album does not constitute proof of 'plant intelligence' in the conventional sense, it offers compelling evidence of something equally profound: we possess the capacity to construct a dialogue where nature is not relegated to the background, but functions as an active partner.

This project helps illuminate a common intuition many people share: the feeling of finally exhaling when immersed in the natural world. Urban life forces us into fragmented rhythms—abrupt shifts in tasks, constant screen illumination, and the pervasive noise pollution from traffic and media. This urban soundscape is musical, certainly, but its score is jarringly erratic.

Nature, conversely, operates on a different framework. It adheres to slow, stable cycles:

• The dependable rhythm of day and night,
• The predictable ebb and flow of tides,
• Alternations between wind-driven movement and profound stillness,
• The reliable return of each season.

When we situate ourselves near trees, earth, or water, our bodies naturally revert to their intended function: self-regulation. Tension begins to dissipate, focus sharpens, and breathing naturally deepens. We often label this experience as 'resting' or 'rebooting,' but fundamentally, it is a process of synchronization: our internal rhythms begin to resonate with the external environment. Energy previously expended fighting the background noise is suddenly available to nourish us.

What Biosonification Truly Achieves

Plants do not vocalize in a human manner, yet life—theirs and ours—is fundamentally built upon rhythm. Consider that every plant possesses an internal pulse of change: water movement, ion transfers, and tissue responses to light and touch. By applying sensors, we translate these minute signals into audible sound. This isn't because the plant is 'singing,' but because we have developed a method to render its processes audible.

This is biosonification: sound serving as a language for observation, not magic replacing science. When viewed holistically, biosonification emerges not as a mere novelty, but as a wise gesture. It:

• Reinforces that a plant is an ongoing process, far removed from being a static object on a windowsill;
• Transforms imperceptible changes into a format the human mind and heart can readily interpret—sound;
• Offers a tangible experience of unity, moving beyond mere theoretical understanding.

At this juncture, the question shifts from 'Do plants feel anything?' to a more pertinent query: 'Am I prepared to acknowledge that the life surrounding me is not mere scenery, but a co-vibration?'

Plants maintain the planet’s tempo through their physical being: roots, canopies, chlorophyll, and steady, persistent growth. We recall this rhythm instinctively when we feel contentment simply sitting beneath a tree or walking a path without headphones. Technologies like PlantWave or ambitious endeavors such as The Secret Symphony of Plants merely make this connection audible, demonstrating that disparate forms share a single resonance.

Adding another layer of empirical data, a study published in eLife in 2025 demonstrated that female moths utilize the ultrasonic clicks emitted by dehydrated plants to guide oviposition. In controlled tests, moths favored sides playing recordings of 'drying plant sounds,' but when actual plants were introduced, the preference shifted toward the quieter (i.e., healthier/more hydrated) specimens. Furthermore, when the moths were deafened, this preference vanished, confirming the decision was based on audible cues. The authors posit this as one of the first strong proofs of acoustic plant-insect interaction; nature communicates via sound constantly, often just outside the human hearing range, without needing our interpretation.

The Impact on Planetary Soundscape

Frankly, we have invented nothing new for the Earth itself. Plants have always existed within electrical fields, exchanging signals and reacting to air and soil vibrations. What is novel here is our evolving perception of these processes.

This shift is perhaps best felt when recalling music familiar since childhood, such as Tchaikovsky's 'Waltz of the Flowers.' Although it contains no actual blossoms, it embodies everything a garden lives by: circular motion, gentle unfurling, light, breath, seasonal shifts, and recurring motifs. It feels as if the composer didn't invent the music but rather recalled nature's language and carefully transcribed it into notes.

The classics often stated that music begins where words fail. Today, we see an extension of that idea: sound persists where we stop listening only to ourselves. Learning to perceive other forms of life—plants, the ocean, the silence between heartbeats—is the true magic where science, art, and spirituality cease conflict and unify as a means of recognizing that the world around us is not mute. We only need to step forward, and the world responds.

We are now collectively acknowledging several key points:

• The life around us is an active network of processes and dialogues, not mere scenery;
• Music is created not only by human composers but by what living systems can become when we learn to listen to them;
• Our role is not to anthropomorphize everything, but to broaden our own sensitivity to the living.

Music remembers us the moment we stop viewing the world as divided into 'us' and 'the rest' and start hearing: the leaf altering its conductivity; the plant emitting ultrasonic clicks due to thirst; the forest breathing light and shadow; and the human finally quieting their internal monologue to notice it all. In that realization, the phrase 'many of us, yet we are ONE' transcends a pretty sentiment and becomes a simple, quiet reality: a single life playing itself out in myriad forms, echoing the same recognizable resonance in every iteration.