The saguaro cactus (carnegiea gigantea), endemic to the Sonoran Desert region is the tallest cactus in the world. Their average height ranges between three to sixteen meters (the tallest ever recorded was twenty-three meters). In 2018, I moved to Arizona for seventeen months in order to better conceptualize the project while in proximity to this species. Inspired by their antenna-like shape, I began to reflect upon how their abundant, towering presence built a plant network as a code that binds the desert together. I envisioned each saguaro acting as an individual transmitter that in unison form an organic satellite dish, and wondered what kind of information it emits.

Plants are inherently silent beings attached to the soil they are rooted in. Based off absorption and reflection of Energy, plants biology reveal cellular information about their habitat accumulated over Time. For example the saguaro, a cactus that has existed endemically in the Sonoran Desert for the past 10.000 years, has organic technology to store water from the heavy monsoons and resist the dryness of the desert soil for the rest of the year, an indicator that this biome has existed as such for over the life of this species. Conditions such as rain, soil, wind, and altitude, are what has made the existence of the saguaro in the Sonoran Desert possible, although there is little further study on why the cactus is not found anywhere else in the world.

How could I listen to their being and amplify the voice of this silent, still, and gigantic species?

Their mesmerizing presence in itself is their greatest form of communication and, in truth, they do not need any amplification. But for our human species, so often imprisoned in ourselves and unable to see what stands before us, listening to the saguaro could perhaps help us have a better read on the Sonoran Desert. Its sound could move us to feel the Land beyond the heavy political dimensions created by its people and enhance our perception of the formation of the region through deep geological time.

This territory, which contains ancient history and overwhelming beauty, has been spiritually and physically fragmented since the first Spanish missions and quests for gold in the 16th C. While exploring the saguaro biome, I had to enmesh myself in the complexities of its land disputes in order to navigate the region. Following the Saguaro meant dealing with the US/Mexico border, adapting to areas controlled by Mexican cartels and US military bases, crossing indigenous reservations, uncovering human fragments in the sand, and mourning the complete dry-out of rivers. Ecologically, the land is abused by overdevelopment, mining, and invasive species brought by an influx of people, all part of a dysfunctional utilitarian narrative imposed upon the territory.

In April of 2024, I recorded the vibrational frequencies of twenty saguaros: seventeen along the perimeter of its entire biome and three on the US/Mexico border that cuts through its habitat. Using the principles of electrophysiology, I researched a way in which I could measure their vibrations by a system utilizing an electrocardiogram. It is a single device that measures slight variations in electric conductivity, graphing those variations as a wave and translating the wave into pitch. These pitch modulations represent real-time biological changes. This device is specifically designed for the cellular conductivity of plants, including several pitch choices created by the company. With the twenty saguaro recordings, my idea is to take the graph of the vibrational data of each recordings and assign them to my own pitches using MAX, a sound engineering software and create an original design for the sound installation piece.

The borderland of the Sonoran Desert is permeated by heavy sonic sub currents, formed by several antenna towers that transmit radio waves from the military, drug cartels, border patrol, and civilians throughout the region. I believe, however, that Land as a sovereign entity transcends people’s dominion over it, and as a counterpoint to the radio towers of this vast desert, I look at the saguaro as towers themselves and as a symbol of integration of this politically fractured region. Their vibrational frequencies uncover their biological-electric function, filled with a cellular memory of its soil, which the sound installation hopes to reveal through the penetrating medium of sound - immaterial, borderless, and of immediate effect.