Mazetools Botany

Sound Gardening

In an overdriven world, taking a moment to pause can help us refocus our gaze and discover something beautiful and special in the everyday. This is the kind of moment Mazetools Botany is about – meditative, inspiring, or creative.

Botany is a game designed to experience music in a new way. From the compositions of selected musicians, we created seeds. When a seed is planted, a plant begins to grow through various interactions. As the plant grows, it plays music: from the roots and leaves to the blossoms, soundscapes and melodies emerge.

We are currently in the alpha phase and are working on fine-tuning the user experience. In dialogue with artists, we are defining the seeds for the first Botany version. This will be followed by a closed beta on various platforms. The release is planned for early 2026.

Screen capture of Mazetools Botany (alpha), November 2025

Between game and musical interaction: A multisensory plant world

Botany is about a new experience of music, an invitation to play music without prior knowledge. We are fascinated by the positive impact of making music and want to create new forms of interaction with musical instruments. Musical diversity is an important concern for us. That is why we asked other musicians whether they could give us tracks from which we can create seeds. They also liked the idea, and thus various interactive musical scenes emerged, based on already published songs and albums and a bidirectional reference is created.

Planting seeds, letting them grow, and exploring them musically – that is what Mazetools Botany is about. The plants become part of a small garden. They open the view to nature and its beauty, to the things and living beings that seem everyday to us and are waiting to be discovered. Playful interactions lead to initial forms of musical interpretation, to sensitive deceleration or virtuosity, to intercultural participation in the phenomenon of electronic music.

In this context, the following principles are important to us:

Accessible to everyone – No prior musical knowledge is required to engage with musical interaction
A game, not a tool – Botany is designed as a playful experience, not as a functional tool or traditional musical instrument
Visual communication – We largely avoid written language to create a universal experience
Cross-platform availability – The game is intended for multiple platforms, which requires significant development time
Inclusive interaction design – We integrate accessible interaction methods such as touch and body tracking
Fair artist compensation – Artists involved in the project receive equitable remuneration
Handcrafted with care – Botany is a personal work created with meticulous attention to detail, deliberately avoiding AI-generated content in its development
Supporting ongoing innovation – Every purchase directly funds the continued development of our Mazetools projects

Background

Since the beginning of the development of the visual synthesizer Maze in 2012, experimental, artistic ideas have been at the forefront of the development. We adapted the software for use in various media contexts: musical sessions in the studio, installations in off spaces, workshops with children and young people, VJing in clubs, concerts, and performance productions – always in collaboration with other artists. The name Mazetools stands for this exemplarily: Maze, the labyrinth, a detour to the actual goal.

Over the years, a diverse software core emerged, which is present both in published apps and in our individual applications, and which is continuously being developed further. Along the way, thanks to various funding sources, we were able to act independently. With the release of Mazetools Soniface, developer Stephan Kloß received the ZKM App Art Award, and with the work Mazetools Mutant, the Giebichenstein Design Award for Best Experiment. Both awards refer to the process of artistic research and development.

Mazetools Botany is connected to an intensive period of fieldwork and study. Stephan Kloß dedicated himself meticulously to the observation of natural environments, especially in his hometown Halle an der Saale.

The river and its surrounding flora and fauna became the central motif of his work – both conceptually and spatially. He also found inspiration in Rothmaler’s Exkursionsflora, whose origins also lie in Halle. Although the content was abstracted, the silhouette of the riverbank and parts of the plants originate from the area.

In parallel, Stephan began the music project Cheetah Dragon, in which he reflects on experiences and observations made during the work on Botany. He complements the musical and textual level with visual documentation. As already mentioned, the musical application has been a fixed part of the development of Mazetools from the beginning. Central to Botany was now the conception of a system for interaction as well as the arrangement of the seeds. The latter consist of a mixture of existing stems from musicians as well as self-developed DSPs and generative mechanisms.

An important concern in the conception is the collaboration with external musicians. They create access for people interested in music who also find joy in making music. Connecting to existing works creates an accessible entry point into musical interaction, which is accompanied by the meditative aesthetics of the plant world. In this way, we want to create a musical and sociocultural offering for people of different generations, social backgrounds, or with special needs.

Credits

Idea, concept, development and design by Stephan Kloß

Creative Producer: Jakob Gruhl

With the kind cooperation of:

Marc-André Weibezahn, Elisabeth Reiche, Jan Lorenz

Mazetools Botany is a production by Ectoplastic 2022-25.

Funded by Investitionsbank Sachsen-Anhalt – Programm Digital Creativity.