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Savia Flow · A free instrument · Runs in your browser · 2026

Whatever is in front of it,
it turns into music.

A free instrument that runs in the browser you already have. Give it your voice, a camera, the way you move, a controller or a plant on a cable: it answers in sound and in light. There is nothing to install. You sign in once with your email, and what you play never leaves your device.

Pick one. It opens the console with that source already set up, and play is the only thing left to press.

Your voiceSing. The note and the colour arrive together. The roomA cello, a kettle, a room of people. It plays what it hears. A cameraA hand across the lens plays a run. Point it at anything that moves. A pictureA line sweeps the frame and plays the colours it crosses. This phone, movingTilt and turn. In a pocket it is a wearable, and a dancer opens the filter. A controllerTouch Me, a keyboard, a pad. Anything that sends MIDI. A pattern you drawFour lanes on a grid whose rows are the colours. Nothing to plug in. A plantA Savia unit through the headphone socket. The unit is still in testing.
Open the console →

Signal · live generator · press play

01 · What it is

The instrument is the console.

Savia began as a way to hear a plant. It is bigger than that now. The console is the instrument, and a plant is one of the things that can drive it, next to a voice, a lens, a controller, a phone in a pocket and a pattern you draw yourself. What all of them have in common: none of them is a recording. It is reading something that is happening in the room, now.

Where it runs

In the browser you already have, on the phone in your pocket. Nothing to install. You sign in once with your email, a code and no password. Add it to the home screen and after that it keeps working with the network switched off.

What comes out

Sound and light, from one measurement. A synth, an effects rack and a four-track looper on one side. On the other the screen answers the same notes, so the phone in your hand becomes the lamp in the room.

Where it goes

Nowhere. Every reading is made on your device and stays there. The console makes no network call after it loads, with one exception it tells you about: the karaoke tab has to ask the internet what song is playing.

Six performers at once, MIDI in and out, a screen you can send to a projector, and a session log you can take with you. Free, MIT licensed, and it does not ask who you are.

Open the console → Read the guide →
02 · Try it

Three mappings. Play them here.

A current is only a number until somebody decides what it means. Drag, move, and listen: each of these turns one kind of change into sound, and every one of them is a choice that could have been made differently. Nothing is recorded and nothing leaves the tab.

01 · Energy → sound

The reading

One number that rises and falls, which is what every one of these sources comes down to in the end. Drag it and hear the pitch follow.

34
02 · Movement → sound

The body

The same engine, driven by how fast you move instead. On a phone it reads the accelerometer; on a laptop it reads the pointer. Move slowly and it stays low.

0
03 · Touch → sound

The contact

Hold the pad. Here that is capacitance in a screen; on a Savia unit it is your hand closing the circuit. The same gesture either way.

off

Every one of these is a choice, not a measurement. Much of what people hear as the character of a species is that choice, and most instruments do not admit it. Change the mapping in the console →

03 · The light

The same signal, seen as light.

This is the console's light, running right here. Press play and a short piece of music starts: every note it hears takes its own colour, every hit lands on the picture, and the scene you pick draws it. Or turn on your microphone and it follows you instead. The picture is never a video: it is drawn from the sound as it plays.

Open the full console → The whole project →

Light · idle

The microphone is optional. It stays in this tab and is never recorded.

Note → colour

C is green. Take the note's own frequency and double it until it lands in visible light: middle C at 261.626 Hz, doubled 41 times, is 575 THz, which is 521 nm, which is green. The twelve climb from there through blue-green and blue to violet at E, run off the top of what an eye can see, and come back at F as the deepest red it still registers. The octave is the lightness: a higher C is a lighter green, a lower C a darker one, and the same for every colour. We chose the rule. The rule chose the colours.

Note → form

Pick cymatics and you are looking at a Chladni plate: sand on a vibrating plate gathers on the lines that stand still, and every frequency has its own figure. The note's real frequency (A4 = 440 Hz) chooses the figure, so a higher note is always a finer one. Pick forms and each sound takes the shape people tend to draw for it: high is thin and pointed, low is round and heavy, a hit is a burst, a held note is a ribbon.

Hit → pulse

Nothing here pulses to a clock. The light listens to the sound itself on every frame, and a pulse is a hit that happened: a kick, a clap, a consonant. In silence the picture slows down and waits for the next sound.

This is a visualisation, not a measurement. It draws what the sound is doing and says nothing on its own about a plant or a body. The Chladni figures are the standing waves of a square plate, solved per pixel. It does not move under prefers-reduced-motion unless you started it yourself, and it stops when it scrolls out of view.

04 · Live sets Step by Steph · Live with plants

Nature’s voice, in an artistic format.

Step by Steph is a multidisciplinary artist and creative technologist whose work is permanently archived on the Moon through the Lunaprise Museum. With Savia Flow she performs live with plants: a garden on stage, each species wired to its own voice, and the set built in real time around what they play. The plant sets the tempo and the phrasing; she answers with harmony, texture, and rhythm. Nothing is pre-recorded from the plant side. Every set is a first take.

Format live DJ + plant ensemble · 45–90 min
Setting gardens · forests · fire circles · galleries · night
First residency set Commons Hub, Hirschwang an der Rax · Sep 2026
Book a set →
05 · The unit In testing · numbers not final

The part that has electrodes on it.

There is a physical Savia too. Two contacts, a circuit that turns a changing resistance into a pulse, and a board that hands that pulse to the console over the cable, over USB or over Bluetooth. It never asks what is between the contacts: a leaf, a mushroom, soil or your own forearm all close the circuit the same way, which is why the instrument crossed species before anybody asked it to.

We are still testing, so this page is not going to quote you a price, a build time or a parts list yet. The first units are being made by hand at the Commons Hub and the bill of materials is not frozen. When the numbers stop moving they go here. The files are open the whole time.

The circuit

Three parts, one loop

One contact, then another, and whatever sits between them closes the circuit. A timer turns that changing resistance into a heartbeat, faster when the sap moves and slower when it rests. A microcontroller maps the heartbeat to notes and sends them on. The living thing chooses the timing. You choose the instrument.

WHAT IT READS: water status · ion movement · light · temperature · touch · wounding.
WHAT IT DOES NOT READ: thoughts. See the science →

Read the build spec → Get the files →
The object

Or hold one

Not everyone wants to solder. The first units are being made by hand at the Commons Hub, and the workshop leaves the skill behind rather than only the object.

Connect a unit → How to help →

A mesh that carries one node's reading to another valley over radio, with no internet in the middle, is the direction after this. Nothing of it is built, so nothing of it is described here yet.

06 · The science

A hundred and fifty years of listening.

1873First recorded plant action potential — the Venus flytrap.
1900sJ. C. Bose builds instruments to record plant electrical responses.
2006Slow wave potentials described: an electrical signal unique to plants.
2012Plant bioacoustics named as a field; roots later shown to grow toward the sound of water.
2021Stress-specific electrical signatures; plants proposed as low-cost biosensors.
2023Cell: stressed plants emit airborne ultrasonic clicks; machine learning classifies species and thirst from sound alone.
2025Commercial plant electrophysiology monitors 1,000+ hectares of European crops (Vivent).
2026Savia Flow: the open, artist-first end of the same field.

What we will never say

  • the plant feels
  • the plant thinks
  • the plant loves
  • the plant wants
  • it recognizes you
  • it reads your emotions

The 1968 “plant perception” experiments did not replicate. Rigor is how nature keeps its voice credible.

07 · Support Free console · open hardware · open firmware

Help us find the best way to do this.

Nobody has built the version of this that a garden can afford and a school can repair. We are looking for it in the open: every circuit, every dead end, every file, published as we go. That takes hands far more than it takes money.

The firmware is MIT, the hardware is CERN-OHL-S, and a recording belongs to whoever made it. None of that changes later.

What actually helps

Eight things, and seven of them cost nothing.

  • Play the console and tell us where it fell over. It is free, it needs nothing but a browser, and the thing we cannot get any other way is what happened on a phone we have never held.
  • Build a unit and tell us what broke. The files are open. The failures are the part we cannot get any other way either.
  • Flash a board. There are ESP32 boards on the bench, and firmware written for them that has never once been put on one.
  • Put a plant on it that we have not tried. Every species reads differently and the dataset is thin.
  • Host a workshop where you are. The guide is written to be handed over.
  • Translate it. English and Spanish exist. Everything after that is open.
  • Lend a room, a laser cutter, a fablab for a build day.
  • Put money in, below, if that is what you have to give.
Get the files → Write to us →
Where it is going

What has to happen

    08 · Questions

    Straight answers.

    Do I need a plant?
    No. The console plays your voice, a camera, the way you move, a MIDI controller or a pattern you draw. A plant is one source out of eight, and it is the one that needs hardware we are still building.
    What does it cost?
    The console is free and it always will be. It is MIT licensed. Signing in costs nothing and asks for an email address and nothing else. The unit is a different question and we are not answering it yet: the boards are still being built by hand and the parts list is not frozen, so any price we printed today would be a guess.
    Does anything I play leave my device?
    No. Every reading is made in your browser and stays there. The console makes no network call after it loads, with one exception it names on screen: the karaoke tab has to ask the internet what song is playing.
    What do I need to install?
    Nothing. Open the console in the browser you already have. Add it to the home screen and it keeps working with the network switched off.
    Is the music really made by the plant?
    When a plant is driving it, yes: every note’s timing comes from the plant’s own electrical rhythm. You choose the instrument and the scale; the plant chooses when. The same is true of every other source. Savia never plays a recording.
    Does the plant feel anything?
    We don’t know, and Savia Flow doesn’t claim to. It measures electrical changes in living tissue. That is remarkable enough.
    Can I build a unit?
    The files and the firmware are open, and the build spec is on this site. We are not publishing a price, a build time or a final parts list while the thing is still in testing, because those are exactly the numbers that move.
    Are you selling instruments?
    No. The whole thing is open: build one from the files, or come to a workshop and leave with one. If you want to help, this is what actually helps.
    What does supporting actually do?
    It keeps the open release moving: the files, the workshop, and the instruments that go where nobody was going to pay for one. Booking a show or a workshop is the most direct way to help.
    Who owns a recording I make?
    You do. Exports are opt-in, nothing is sold, and none of that changes later.
    Where does the money go?
    What comes in from shows and workshops pays for the open release and the workshop before it pays for anything else.
    Savia Flowlive generator