5 November

Bio Orchestra opens InScience

The fifth edition of InScience is kicked off musically by the Bio Orchestra; a collaborative project of Fillip Studios and the Plant Physiology Department at Wageningen University. A string ensemble of ArtEZ students performs the composition based on the growth data of modified plants.

Composition

Tom Kortbeek (Fillip Studios) uses music as a means to bring people closer to the feeling the scientists have when they look at plants. He bases this on the genes that are expressed in the plant. By giving each gene a tone and linking that to a set of genes, chords are created. This way, you can “hear” which genes become active in a plant. Young plants sound differently from older plants. A damaged plant sounds different again due to the activated defense genes. Kortbeek uses this information to build a musical structure and ultimately to build a composition that can be played by an ensemble or orchestra.

Opening InScience 2019

After the musical opening, the Dutch premiere of the science documentary Human Nature (Adam Bolt, 2019) will take place. After the film, presenter Dan Jing Wu, biomedical engineer at the Eindhoven University of Technology will talk to Dr. Michel Haring, Professor of Plant Physiology at the University of Amsterdam.