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Arcadia Installation Cultivates Green Consciousness A groundbreaking exhibit featuring plants as musical composers and visual performers opened in November 2020 and ran through December 2021. Arcadia was created by artist Sam Nester and offered in partnership with the School of Art’s Murals at Mason and Mason Exhibitions initiatives. The exhibit was accessible via its dedicated Twitch livestream and in person from outside the Presidents Park Hydroponic Greenhouse on Mason’s Fairfax campus. Arcadia uses modified biodata-sonification sensors to convert the natural, real-time biorhythms of Virginia native plants into Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data. Data collected from the plants is processed via a computer that then outputs sound through a variety of MIDI instruments. Plant signals controlling the MIDI instruments also control an LED light display corresponding to the pitches of the instruments. The audiovisual experience creates a synesthetic art exhibition where the activation of one sense triggers other senses. Arcadia applied contemporary artistic practice to engage cross-disciplinary research with collaborators throughout the year. Two of these partners were the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being and Mason Recreation, which hosted yoga classes with Arcadia in the spring and fall of 2021. Similarly, Donielle Nolan, the Greenhouse and Gardens Program Manager and current Biosciences PhD student, is making use of the exhibit to conduct research on the propagation of American ginseng and soil microbiome health—both of which support her ongoing research about root rot in hydroponics and her development of an organic integrated pest management (IPM) program.
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Arcadia Installation created by artist Sam Nester as viewed outside the Presidents Park Hydroponic Greenhouse
Photo by Evan Cantwell, Creative Services, George Mason University
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“ A RCADIA REPRESENTS AN INSPIRING FUSION OF WORLDS—THE NATURAL AND THE DIGITAL, THE VISUAL AND THE MUSICAL. THIS KIND OF BOUNDARY BLURRING SPEAKS DIRECTLY TO A VISION OF A BETTER FUTURE.” RICK DAVIS, Dean, CVPA
University Curator Don Russell supports Arcadia’s integration of research, “I would like to see contemporary artists collaborating in all types of research, not only by influencing the research process, but by creating an accessible and communicable result: a work of art.”
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CVPA 2020-2021 ANNUAL REPORT 15
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