Listen to the yowling, ethereal sounds a Joshua tree can be made to make toggle caption Carlos Jaramillo for NPR The artist Scott Kildall is waving his hand over the contours of a Joshua tree, just inches from its spiky green, bayonet-like leaves. "If I get too close to it, it will prick me and draw blood," he says. "And it's done that before.
" In his palm, he has a microcontroller — just about the size of a credit card. It's got a few wires sticking out, and an infrared sensor, which picks up wavelengths of light just beyond what the human eye can perceive. "It's kind of like magic," Kildall says.
"And the magic is just revealing something that's right beyond our levels of perception." The magic is part of Kildall's latest sound installation — a work he calls Infrared Reflections. He developed the piece as an artist-in-residence at Joshua Tree National Park this spring, and it transforms near-infrared light bouncing off the iconic scraggly yuccas into a shimmering mosaic of otherworldly music — essentially turning the Joshua tree into an instrument.
Kildall is neither a computer scientist nor a musician, though he does play the ukulele. This artwork relies on both disciplines, as Kildall needs to build sensors, route their data to a computer, process and smooth that data, and convert it all into something beautiful for the ear. "With art and technology, you have to constantly think about wearing multiple hats.
Are you an IT person? Are you an artist? And you have to be.