Debuting at the Maker Faire Rome (alongside the YesYesBot,Lyt, and the Social City Detector ), St. Horto is an interactive garden installation created to merge the worlds of architecture, nature, music, and social technology.In the time lapse video above, shot at Palazzo dei Congressi in Rome, a series of cultivated plant areas rigged with "sonic harps" devised from sensor-activated cables and an interactive lighting system combine to turn a quiet rooftop garden into a full-on symphony.
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Inspired in part by the empirical use of sensors in gardens, as well as the work of Alberto Serra (creator of Jardimpu), the team at OFL Architecture worked with Federico Giacomarra to create real time monitoring of the garden, employing hardware tools tricked out with Arduino, sensors, a webcam, and other software. At specific angles of the garden, steel cables were used to help the whole installation morph into a harp-like instrument.
Through a custom computer and audio signals, St Horto can produce in real time a musical composition (based on the work and programming of Vincenzo Core) starting with a single tune that generates automatically according to homothetic principles.
The music length is then divided into multiples of two, leaving blank "length reports" between musical notes. In this blank area is where a range of variations can occur.
While there are no sample timbres, all the sounds are created in real time through "subtractive synthesis and physical patterns synthesis." This essentially means that the music is subject to environmental variables, detected by a weather station installed in the garden. As the weather fluctuates, different speeds create clusters of sound: the wind actives the sound clusters, temperature moderates the timbre, and the humidity amplifies echoes and reverberations.
However, here is where the human element enters. Each of the plants and vegetables are rigged with sensors, attaching them to the sonic harp. If someone touches the plant, a note will be provided, and within a few seconds the garden will go into "resonance," playing a melody without any external interference. Employing a full arsenal of tech and design elements, St. Horto is composed of environmental sensors to measure soil moisture, temperature, air humidity, and light, a series of Solenoid valves and sprinklers, and range of Arduino programmable electronic tools.
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