Sonic Blooming by Crystal Quartez

The practice of creating any kind of art or music is oftentimes a strictly solitary affair: a lone producer in the dark making eerie sounds with only the glow of a computer screen and the tiny LEDs of the synthesizers to light the room. But for Portland artist Crystal Quartez, the link between herself, her audience, and the world around us is a core part of the music-making process.

A self-described “sound, installation artist & creative technologist”, Crystal Cortez uses field recordings, synthesis, audio programming, data sonification, and 3D sound spatialization in her music and live performances, often involving the audience as collaborators in the performance.

That mentality of shared creative experience was integral to Sonic Blooming, an immersive “sound walk” in Portland’s International Rose Test Garden created by attaching sensors to the flowers to collect their electrical impulses and translating the impulses into musical pitches and sound. Along with field recordings from the space itself, the combination became a sonic representation of the flowers in bloom.

Thankfully, the recording of this beautiful project is now available as a collaboration between Portland’s Form The Head and Beacon Sound labels. While the physical experience of the walk is absent on the recording, Cortez includes thoughtful suggestions for meditations to connect the listener to each song in a deeper way than passive listening. Whether meditating or simply listening, the sense of growth and change is still deeply present. Colorful, bold, and fragile like the plants themselves, each piece, named after the stages of flowering, contains a deep feeling of joy and a reminder that life is a process with its own movement and resonance. For us humans, it’s also a reminder that life and growth are very much a shared experience with more similarities than differences.

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