The Silent Residents

Nobody has ever really heard them. Nobody really gives any care about them. Nobody would really notice them. But they are everywhere.

This is a very special project, about a special group of beings that reside together (rather awkwardly) with us here in the urban forest. They are none other than the greens around you. The Silent Resident is a book with audio accompaniment installed for a day in the library of School of Art, Design and Media, NTU.

While me and my project partner was interested in unveiling the mystery of plants, we were also fascinated by the idea of hoaxes. It isn't about people's stupidity that works hoaxes, but the believe-ability of that certain information that plays on people's mind.

Where/when no one has ever wondered, make them.

And they will believe you.

After our seemingly endless research on the topic of hearing plants, we found an old documentation of a certain botanist who claimed to have recorded the "sounds" of plants and their working mechanics. The book illustrates (traditionally) the plants he studied on and the old radio holds the recording of the plant.

Fonts and fruit designs by Faisal Husni. 

Illustrations and sound compilations by Yuu.

The original copy of  "The Silent Resident" and recordings by Sir Phineas Blackwood and Greogory Klausner, was never completed. Blackwood ventured on to other studies of botany while Klausner was later sent to the asylum in the later part of his career years. He drove himself crazy listening to the plants through his Machine. The Machine cannot be found after Klausner's death, and no other documentation of it was left behind by Klausner. It is believed that Klausner, in his madness, destroyed the Machine together with parts of his works.