Entangled Harmonies: Exploring connection to the more-than-human through interactive bio-generated sound and the inner life of plants

Willow Gatewood

Entangled Harmonies is an interactive sonic ecosystem that explores human entanglement with the more-than-human world through live bio-data sonification (biosonification) and field recordings. Biosonification involves portraying processes within organisms as music or sound. Electrodes and a MIDI-data biosonification device convert fluctuations in microconductivity in organisms to MIDI notes, which “play” an ever-changing soundscape with digital instruments. Elements of the display invite viewers — I will call them participants, as their interaction co-creates the exhibit — to interact with organisms, to touch, to “play,” and experiment with shaping sound. As both an artistic and cultural medium, technology can augment the ways in which we interact with, experience, and understand non-human organisms like plants and fungi. With Entangled Harmonies, I utilise biosonification as a creative means to translate an organism’s “aliveness” and internal rhythms of beings like plants that are oft-seen as static or mere objects by the human observer. The installation presented at RSD is part of a growing body of work designing sound experiences, song-craft, and performance co-created with the more-than-human. My goal with this project is to uncover the hidden web of connections that build our world and inspire participants to reflect on how they are affected by—and affect—the surrounding environment, both now and in the future. 

KEYWORDS: systemic design, entanglement, more-than-human realm, more-than-human intelligence, semiotics, translation, inter-species creativity, biology, plants, fungi, biosonification, acoustic ecology, sound installation, immersive art, interactive sound art