Born in 1944, John Lifton studied architecture at University College London. He was one of the first people to become interested in the impact of information technologies on architecture. In 1968, the year he graduated, Lifton was involved in the creation of the international Computer Arts Society, and he exhibited in the landmark Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London. The following year he was a founder of the London New Arts Lab and the Institute for Research in Art and Technology, a base for experimental performance and mixed media work, where he set up the first free computer facility specifically for artists.

Lifton’s computer interactive environments were exhibited throughout the UK and Europe, and were used in electronic music performances. He was also a member of the experimental music group Naked Software during this period. In 1976, Lifton collaborated with Richard Lowenberg, Jim Wiseman, and Tom Zahuranec on the feature film The Secret Life of Plants. One sequence documented Lifton’s Green Music (which had previously been exhibited at Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1975). According to Lowenberg, Christopher Bird, co-author of the book, The Secret Life of Plants offered his help and his basement lab facilities. Ultimately, the film only included a very small section of Green Music, which has been described as follows:

Over the course of four days in June 1976, while open to the public, six large plants in the center of the glass Plant Conservatory in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, produced an audible, live digital music score, based on bio-electric sensing of their responses to light, temperature, movement and other physio-environmental factors (using gold needle electrodes at the base of the stem and root). Amid the ‘tropical garden’ stood a five foot high rack of audio and digital processing systems, including the just purchased, Altair 8800, which John was constantly (re)programming in Machine Language.

From 1974 to 1977 Lifton taught graduate students at the Royal College of Art in London, in both the departments of Environmental Media and Design Research. He moved to Telluride, Colorado in 1977 where he currently lives and works. He co-directed Other Minds with Charles Amirkhanian from 1988 to 1991. Lifton is a founder of the Telluride Institute and is currently developing the Center for the Future in Slavonice, Czech Republic.

Both Green Music and The Secret Life of Plants were part of Psychobotany: Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Human/Plant Communication, an exhibition at Machine Project, LA (2007). Read this prescient interview - Composing in the information age - by Chris Meyer, Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1992. [Thanks to Paul Brown]

Related projects: Akousmaflore and Pieces for Plants.