registering action and authenticities

this week i have been consulting electronics handbooks and researching plant power. it would seem that large plants, that is - trees, can generate some low level voltage action. i've always been keen to somehow extract some sort of energy out of plants - perhaps as a way of illustrating the energetic charge i myself feel i acquire from being in the presence of nature. so this actual, measurable voltage charge is an interesting thing. 

in my sculptural works, the scale of the natural elements used (that is - little household plants) don't quite carry enough electrical charge to actually register with the equipment i have been harvesting from stereos. at least not without some more seriously scientific investigation. this is something i plan to pursue. however, for the purposes of an upcoming show, for which i will be contributing a small sculpture, i'd still like to engage with this idea. and in the interest of still communicating the potential electrical potency of plants, i'm going to rig up a voltage meter so that it appears to be reading some sort of electrical charge from the plant.

now this is something i have wrestled with for a while. ideally, and indeed my future intention will resolutely go in this direction, i would like to authentically harness actual power/information generated by plants/trees. in some cases i have indeed done this. however, producing simulations of these effects has a slight ring of illusion to it. and this troubles me to a small degree. but... in art, deception, illusion and trickery is territory well traversed. and if i think of the simple illusion of single point perspective in painting, i feel as if there is some place for illusion. if it stimulates the mind, and is conducted in such a way that it is not intended to make a fool of the viewer but rather to open up possibilities of thought, then surely that can't be too bad a thing.

so for my next sculptural work, i've started to rig up a voltage fluctuating device. one that produces a variant flow of voltage from a small battery, driven by the rotating second hand of a small clock. the voltage meter will be rigged up to a small plant or small terrarium of plants and appear to be giving a reading of the plant generating some sort of electrical charge.

i'm toying with the idea of pushing this one step further, where the energy being read from the plant then produces something else. i like the simple idea that the plants around us are generating some sort of energy (and for me i find this energy to be a medicinal one) but i would like to propose that this energy is then some sort of information that can be translated into something. in the past i've translated this energy into sound. this is still a fruitful possibility. i am also keen to explore more options too and with this new re-evaluation of my work, i'm thinking this is a direction to pursue with renewed vigour.