Phytophonia_ Translating the Unspoken

Phytophonia: Translating the Unspoken is a video installation that explores translation not as a 
neutral transfer of information, but as a creative, technological, and political process that actively 
reshapes meaning. The work proposes a speculative interface for interspecies communication, 
in which biological activity is converted into sound and mediated through artificial intelligence, 
revealing both the possibilities and distortions inherent in all acts of translation. 
At the center of the visual field stands a single living plant, isolated within a white, institutional 
space resembling a museum display. Thin electronic sensors are attached to its stem, capturing 
micro-variations in electrical potential and conductivity—natural biological fluctuations influenced 
by internal processes and environmental conditions. These signals do not constitute language 
or intentional expression; they belong to a biological system that operates outside human 
semantic frameworks. 
The measured data is translated into control signals that drive a modular synthesizer system. 
Instead of recording sound from the plant, the system converts biological variation into changes 
in sonic parameters such as frequency, filtering, amplitude, and modulation. The resulting 
soundscape is therefore not the plant “speaking,” but an acoustic construction shaped by 
algorithmic mapping and machine response. Musical structure, rhythm, and emotional tone 
emerge not from vegetal intention, but from the interpretive framework imposed by the 
translation system itself. 
This process positions sound as an invented language rather than a revealed one. Each 
technical decision—how voltage maps to pitch, how fluctuation becomes rhythm, how noise 
becomes harmony—introduces bias and aesthetic direction. What the audience hears is not 
biological truth, but the emotional consequence of technological interpretation. In this way, the 
work treats translation as a site where invention and distortion are inseparable from 
communication. 
The visual component of the work is generated using artificial intelligence. The AI does not 
document the plant in real time, but produces a hyper-controlled, static, and idealized 
representation of observation. The stillness of the image contrasts with the activity of the sound, 
creating the illusion of a “live performance” while simultaneously revealing its artificial 
construction. AI thus functions not only as a production tool, but as a second layer of 
translation—reshaping organic presence into a stylized, institutionalized image of life under 
observation. 
Within this system, artificial intelligence becomes a speculative mediator species: positioned 
between biological processes and human perception, filtering what can be seen and shaping 
how it is emotionally processed. The work therefore reflects on how contemporary experience of 
nature is increasingly mediated through data, interfaces, and algorithmic representation. What 
appears as dialogue may also be a form of extraction, where living systems become legible only 
after being converted into measurable and aestheticized information. 
By isolating the plant from ecological context and presenting it as a monitored specimen, the 
installation emphasizes the asymmetry of interspecies translation. The plant does not 
communicate; it is interpreted. Its biological variability becomes raw material for technological 
meaning-making. The blinking electronic indicators and synthetic sound draw attention to the 
machinery of translation itself, rather than to any illusion of direct access to non-human 
consciousness. 
Within the framework of Translatio et Inventio, the project frames translation as a productive yet 
unstable bridge between radically different modes of existence. Rather than offering access to 
an authentic vegetal voice, Phytophonia foregrounds the impossibility of unmediated dialogue 
and invites reflection on how all forms of translation—linguistic, cultural, technological, or 
interspecies—do not merely transmit reality, but actively participate in its construction. 
The work ultimately asks not whether we can hear plants, but how much of what we call 
communication is shaped by the systems we build to listen.