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Malefi-scent's Descent
A vigil over a single flower, sung for as long as it takes to bloom and die.
In the understory of the Amazon Spheres, a corpse flower named Malefi-scent comes into bloom — a rare flower from the rainforests of Southeast Asia that opens, briefly, then dies. A sensor rests against it, reading its temperature and humidity minute by minute. Those readings become everything you hear and see — the flower's own vital signs. The work plays for the whole short life of the bloom; it never repeats, and it only goes one way.
It is a lullaby for something that cannot be kept — a bloom that is spectacular, and already dying as it opens. The work does not preserve it or idealise it. It simply keeps watch, the way one sits with anything that is passing.
What you hear
Everything sounds in C♯, the old key of mourning. A heartbeat, set by the flower's warmth, runs quick as the bloom opens hot and slows as the body cools. Over it, a lullaby darkens key by key and loses notes as the flower fades, until only a bare open fifth is left ringing — no major or minor, only distance, the one sound that has held since the first moment. Around it all is the forest the flower came from: cicadas, a passing rain, a frog, a far bird, distant thunder. Nothing is recorded — every sound is synthesised in real time from the flower's readings.
What you see
The breathing form of light is the flower. Its heartbeat pulses at the centre and travels outward in rings; humidity opens and closes the body; its colour follows the flower's warmth. As the bloom dies, the form dims, slows, and sheds small lights that drift down and vanish. Everything you see is driven by what you hear — when the sound rests, the light rests with it.
Present, or remembered
While the sensor reads a living flower, the work follows that body in real time — its real warmth, its real decline. When the flower is gone, it does not stop; it keeps the vigil from memory, in step with the calendar, so the watch is never broken.
With thanks
Presented with the Amazon Global Real Estate & Facilities (GREF) Horticulture team, who grow and care for the bloom.
Details
Artist Joshua Borsman
Year 2026
Medium Real-time generative sound and light; environmental sensor, web audio, projection
Site The understory of the Amazon Spheres, Seattle
Duration Continuous and non-repeating; the life of the bloom
Tuning C♯ minor, descending by mode as the bloom decays; root C♯₂, 69.30 Hz
Source The temperature and humidity of the living bloom; an internal model when the sensor is absent
Materials Web Audio and Canvas; every sound synthesised in the moment, nothing recorded
Joshua Borsman makes sculpture, sound, and kinetic work — staged in galleries, gardens, sidewalks, and orbit — that turns real signals into work that unfolds in time and refuses to repeat. joshuaborsman.com
© 2026 Joshua Borsman. All rights reserved.