Episode 4 : Dazzling Arrays of Information - a conversation with Willow Gatewood

Welcome to Wild Resonance, a new web series exploring bioacoustics and the sounds of the natural world. 

In this fourth episode, host Stephen Griesgraber talks with researcher and sound artist Willow Gatewood about their work. They talk about a variety of topics; improvising with biosonified plants, the nuances of how communication occurs between insects and plants, and how we might use AI to collaborate with these communication networks in order to restore ecosystems. 

Willow Gatewood is an environmental scientist, interdisciplinary artist, musician, and storyteller from rural Virgina - currently based in NYC. They explore themes of ecology, gender, and social issues in their work, intersecting art and technology through visual, sonic, and literary mediums. Through a constant autobiographical exploration of nature, they are driven to use this intersection to invite us to question our relationships to critical environmental and social issues. 

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Wild Resonance IG: a_wild_resonance 

Willow Gatewood IG: willowg_music 

Willow Gatewood YouTube: https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UC6Ei7cO6yx1H_Ddda34qkow

https://willowgatewood.com/work 

https://willowgatewood.com/workshops-living-labs 

https://willowgatewood.com/poetics-of-plants-ecoprinting 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4Ci7nNIvUIsvOt17n8A2Fm?si=IX59XxpTRMewhi0P-m9mag 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I get curious about okay, what will happen if I introduce some stress to everyone in the room, including the plant. So I'll start using instruments with frequencies that are, you know, like that it gets your heart pumping, or you know, maybe you feel it really deeply in your body. And the plant also does the same thing. And I'm always curious of like, okay, how is it responding when I'm sonifying it?

SPEAKER_04 0:29

Welcome to Wild Resonance, a show where we explore sounds of the natural world through conversations with biologists, musicians, artists, writers, uh field recordists, and all manner of sonic explorers. I'm your host, Stephen Greesgraber, and today I'll be talking with Willow Gatewood. Willow is an environmental scientist, a musician, a multimedia artist, writer, poet, whose work uh often involves the biosonification of the more than human, something that I'm really excited to see in action today. Willow has presented their work at the Deep Water Literary Festival in Narrowsburg, New York, the Margaret Lane Gallery in Hillsboro, North Carolina, and here in Brooklyn at Reforester's Lab. So, Willow, thank you for being here and welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

SPEAKER_04 1:17

Before we get into all of this, I wondered if you could share a little bit about your background. You're an environmental scientist and you're an artist. What got you here? What's your path to all of this?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Uh goodness. My path has been uh very multi- and interdisciplinary, I would say. I in college I studied environment and sustainability with a focus on ecology, but particularly the ecology of the small, so plants and fungi and microbes, um, a lot of soil ecology and how that relates to global climate. Um, I also did a lot with indigenous science and then um climate sociology. I was really on more of a hard research path until I had um different things uh health-wise come up. And I've always been very artistic. Uh, I guess just it's sort of part of me in how I explore the world around me. Um so I started doing more with art and then finding ways I could blend this art and science and realizing that it was a good way for environmental communication. I guess then I did a residency in 2023 at the School of Visual Arts at their bioarts lab. And that sort of, I guess, kind of landed me here in this sphere in New York, um, doing a lot more working with uh both my science interest in plant neurobiology and fungal neurobiology, but also the artistic and sound and music side. So now I create a lot of sonic installations or sonic performances um with the more than human.

SPEAKER_04 2:57

Wow. And so if we can back up a little a little bit, um you said that it was sort of a hard science perspective that you that you started out with. And um I uh if you forgive me, I forget the exact word that you used, but um looking at the small.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Yes, the ecology of the small.

SPEAKER_04 3:13

The ecology of the small. Could you talk about that just a little bit more from the hard science perspective that you began with? Because I, you know, we're gonna get into um the art side of it as well. But uh where were what were you studying and researching?

SPEAKER_00 3:27

So um one of my favorite projects that I was working on in college was um recording and sonifying uh action potentials in my cellular networks. Um, because there's a research, Andrew Adamatsky, that um posits that, and now there's been further research and it's been more confirmed that um electrical spiking, so action potentials are basically these little electrical lips that we have in our brain. That's actually how our neurons work, and plants and fungi um also have them. And um, Andrew Adamatsky suggests that maybe that is a form of language across a micellal network, because if you imagine the fungi and then the the actual true body of the the mushroom, the mycellular network, uh they can be vast, meters and meters, like uh as large as a football field. But in communication can be pretty much instantaneous between one corner to the next corner. And um people have often wondered how is that so? So I was working with a lab in Canapolis to try to record and then also sonify that and see if we could recognize patterns of language. Because I guess with my interest, and this kind of goes over into now, I've always been fascinated by language and communication and intelligences that are often unrecognized by us. Um, at first in college it was intelligences of plants and fungi and microbial networks that um so I guess if you think of an ecosystem, an ecosystem is an emergent type of intelligence, basically, because of how it works. It's comprised of all of these different parts, but it can only be an ecosystem, an organism, a thing, um, by the emergence that occurs by all of these parts working together. So that those were my main research interests in um in college.

SPEAKER_04 5:40

You mentioned that you wanted to um biosonify the you want to sonify these mycellular networks fairly early on, which leads into your art, um, but still staying, you know, in sort of the hard science, um, you know, looking through the hard science lens, uh, what were you hoping to discover from a research perspective or a data perspective from the biosonification at that time?

SPEAKER_00 6:04

So from that, uh basically, if we could decode these patterns um and show that fungal networks do use electricity as a form of communication. Because we and even now, looking back now, that was only um that was only a couple years ago, like two years ago, and now we've confirmed a lot more. Uh, so we know that, okay, fungal networks are likely using electricity. And um, actually, Marilyn Sheldrake and several other researchers just released a paper on this that kind of confirms uh a lot of the types of signals basically that fungal networks use to communicate with one another and also with the rest of the ecology, for instance, in a forest around them. So I was interested largely in how all of these organisms are communicating together. So, how is this network communicating not only across itself, but also to all of the other fungal networks around it and to the plants and trees that it might be connecting and exchanging this flow of information and nutrients with? But first, in order to do that, you must have this background of okay, how does it communicate with itself first and kind of create a baseline for that? And that's why I was interested particularly in this electrical spiking, because it was an area like we have done more research in chemicals, how fungal networks move and use chemicals to communicate across their network. So that's why I was particularly interested in the electricity, because it was just an area that hasn't been explored as much. And also I was very interested in the idea of fungal computing, and I'm still interested in that idea that fungal networks can be used as a hyper-efficient way of storing and transmitting data like you know, that we have in our computers. So that's why I focused on the electricity, but it was ultimately a starting point of what I could do in undergrad um to reach a larger goal of looking at these interspecies communications in general and looking at um how a fungal network fits into this broader ecosystem and how basically how we can work with them to restore ecosystems. Because if we know how they communicate with one another and then we can communicate with them, then we can better, I guess, have an impact on restoration of ecosystems because that's where it fits into the global climate picture.

SPEAKER_04 8:52

So, and of course, in bioacoustics, um, some of the most most commonly studied um non-human species are cetaceans and birds, and we've had cetacean and bird experts on the show before, and a lot of times what they're communicating um seems to be about um mating, about territory, about hunting or finding food. When you were studying these networks, you mentioned nutrition. Uh, what sorts of things are um these networks communicating? What are their imperatives? What um what did you find in that regard?

SPEAKER_00 9:31

I'm I'm going to draw on a lot of other people's research because in my own research, I didn't get terribly far because I ended up graduating and having no longer access to that lab. But I I did, I learned a lot, and um I've also since then continued research, I guess pushing this envelope even further of interspecies communication. But basically, and this is one reason I am particularly fascinated by uh fungi and plants and their languages because it's so other and different than ours, and it's really exciting. Um, when we think of a lot of, as you see, as you mentioned, species like cetaceans or birds, um, other mammals, a lot of times when they're communicating, they're communicating, at least to our knowledge, similar things that we would be communicating. That's right. Our needs, our our cultures, maybe even desires, you know. But with plants and fungi, we really don't know for sure. There's so much unknown and uncertainty still that's exciting. Um, but we do know that they are talking a lot, if we want to use the word talking, uh, about in for there or exchanging information flows about uh nutrients. For instance, um if you say imagine a forest, you have groups of trees and then shrubs and different plants, and then you have the fungi that are all underground kind of connecting these. And then in addition to the fungi, you have all of the other soil ecology, so all of the microbes and bacteria that are also connected to the fungi, and through the fungi connected to the trees. When you're thinking of what are they communicating among one another, uh a plant is probably sending out signals of, okay, I need this type of nutrients, maybe they need nitrogen, for instance. Uh, so they send out a chemical signal that says, I need nitrogen. Um, and then the fungi will spread out that signal and say, This plant needs nitrogen. Who has extra nitrogen that they want to give? Or if there is none available, can this bacteria start doing its thing and converting what the bacteria does is we have nitrogen in our soil from the atmosphere that is not available to plants without uh microbes that turn it into a usable source of nitrogen fertilizer for them. So the fungi might reach out with its hypha to them and say, okay, we need some nitrogen over here. And the bacteria will then do its work uh and convert that nitrogen, and then the fungi will send that actually not just information, not just language, but actually send that nitrogen to the tree. So it's it's like they're communicating both a both needs and like a language, but also the actual chemicals and materials that are needed. Or maybe this tree over here has a lot of excess. Usually this is more, it's found more in carbon. So if a tree needs carbon, this tree over here may have a lot stored within its roots, within its fungal network, for instance. Um, so if this tree needs carbon, it might send out a signal, and this tree is, oh, I have extra carbon. So the fungi might then kind of draw that carbon and give it to this tree. So they're communicating things like that. We've also seen that they communicate uh stress and um if they're being attacked. For instance, a tree might be attacked by an insect. One thing that it could do is actually through the air release an aromatic compound, so a chemical, um, that it could be talking to the uh the trees around it, warning basically, I'm being attacked, you might be attacked to it. And a tree nearby might actually then start producing a chemical and sending it to its leaves. Like an oak, for instance, might it has a tannin uh chemical that protects its leaves from insects because it makes it very bitter. So it might send out more to that to its leaves, um, because this tree over here basically told the forest by way of this chemical uh compound that it released that it's being attacked. It also might speak to the insect directly. A lot of insects pick up these aromatic chemicals. They're sort of like pheromones almost. So that tree might be speaking to the insect directly, or there's thinking back to sound because we're on this podcast, um, a very interesting uh study that people have been doing is trees can actually produce a popping sound within their xylem. Other plants do it too, not just trees. So that when they're water stressed, they will make this uh ultrasonic pop, pop, pop sound uh that insects can hear because it's ultrasonic. And it basically alerts insects that, hey, I'm water stressed. If you come and lay your eggs on me, you know, like your eggs are going to hatch, and then I will provide food for your babies. Um I might die because I'm water stressed, and thus your offspring might die too. So it's kind of telling the insects, don't eat me, please, because you might hurt me. But if you do that, uh you also are probably not uh continuing your lineage, so it's not gonna be good for either of us. So they're communicating just this dazzling array of information all the time. If we think about stepping into a forest or any ecosystem, we're really kind of swimming and walking on top of this just messy, complex array of chemical and electrical signals that are constantly communicating things about uh nutrients, about needs. Uh, we we don't know if they're desires, so I'm not gonna say desires, but about needs and about stress and about warnings, uh, and then all of these other things that we don't know yet. So it's yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:52

That's fascinating. I'm interested in in whether or not certain species of um mycelium and let's say trees that you know have these root networks where information uh may be um communicated via the mycelium. Are there's are you aware of or did you discover um specific pairings? Like, you know, certain species uh communicate with other species but not others, and and then also uh with insects as well, because I was thinking about what you just said with the popping in the xylem of a water stressed tree and an insect maybe reacting and saying, Well, we're not gonna lay eggs on that tree because we don't want to kill it, we need it. Um but then I'm also thinking about this big beautiful ash tree I have in front of my childhood home in Minneapolis that's constantly under threat of having to be cut down because of the emerald ash bore. And so there you have a species that's not native to um areas of the world where we have these ashes and they're basically, you know, eating up their food source, you know, they're the when the ashes are gone, maybe they're gone too. I don't I don't know, but it would seem that the communication is not happening there, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:02

So um, what do you know or what have you found in terms of like symbiotic relationships between certain um species but not others?

SPEAKER_00 17:11

That is a very, very large question and a lot to unpack. So I will try to there keep it kind of brief and also in two different parts. Um, first, yes, uh plants and fungi are often quite picky, if we want. So uh within ecosystems, uh you constantly have this co-evolution and certain species will co-evolve alongside other species. So there are a lot of trees, for instance, that are like birch trees, are very specific to the types of ectomycorrhizal relationships that they'll form. And I will um just to kind of preface, there are different types of mycorrhizal fungi that assist plant species. There's arbuscular, those are actually small, more microscopic fungi that live within the roots only. They don't fruit like you, they don't have mushrooms like ectomycorrhizal. And those can be very, very specific. I've actually done research. Um I don't remember the name of this plant because it it only has a scientific name, but it's endemic, meaning it only lives in a certain area of North Carolina where I was in college. And um, it has relationships with uh arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and they are very specific to that plant. But when you're trying to find out what kind they are, you you have to do uh genotyping, so you have to basically run it through a genome sequencer to like find the DNA of it because it's microscopic and you can't tease it apart from the root, but it's so hard to find out what species it is because it is literally interwoven within the plant DNA, basically. You get all of this messiness. Um, so that's that's one thing. You have arbuscular mycorrhiza that are very, very intertwined, sometimes even within the genome of that plant species. And then um you have ectomycorrhizal fungi, which is the fungi that you see the white fuzzy mycelium and you see the fruits, so the the actual mushroom. And those two can be specific. You have some generalists that are just happy to hook up with anyone, and then you have um some that are particularly um picky, so maybe they co-evolved with only this certain group of plants, but you also have interesting um examples where it's almost like we would say it's almost cultural. Um, so for instance, there a European larch is a good example. Um, and I'm thinking of this because I was just in the Alps, the Monviso, looking at European larches, and they have a huge diversity of types of ectomycorrhizal fungi that they will uh have form these relationships with. But it's very place specific. So for instance, larches within the French Alps may only form relationships with this set of fungi species, and then larches within um the Italian Alps over here, maybe it's like slightly different, and they they just evolved with a different set of species. So they'll only form relationships with this set of species. And they found that uh this is particularly important for thinking of agriculture and thinking of how you know we build this ecological agriculture to grow food better. You can't just put any type of ectomycorrhizal fungi uh or even like insert a type of arbuscular fungi with a plant and expect it to help it to grow because they might not be compatible, they might not know how to talk and communicate. And they found that with the larches. With if you plant a larch because it's it's a um economic tree species, if you plant a larch and just put any ectomycorrhizal fungi with it, it might not even form a good relationship if it's not that specific larch's preference, even if the lar, like you have they're all one tree species, but they come from different regions. So there's this regionality with it. Yeah. Um, I'm not as familiar with insect relations, but I am sure that there are certain I know that there are certain insects that hear the xylem pops, for instance, and certain insects that are probably not listening in for that. Um, ants, for instance, um, they have very good, they're very sensitive. Um, we would call it hearing, but it's basically just sound vibrations. They pick up on that a lot. I do know that they will have uh they can hear certain vibrations from plants and from fungi even moving, uh, whereas like a bee, for For instance, is not going to hear that it's going to be paying much more attention to the pheromones and the sense that plants are releasing. So that's that that first part. What what was your remind me your second part?

SPEAKER_04 22:13

Oh, I mean, my question was too long. So I've already forgotten the uh second part. But I think, you know, that pretty I mean you answered it very well. Um I think it's it's interesting thinking about those mycelial networks and and different, I guess they wouldn't be subspecies, but sort of different like regional differences between the same species having different responses. It reminds me of um the xenophobia of or of orcas, you know, where where these animals that look identical to us and seem totally interchangeable, they will, you know, gather and and a pod will drive away an intruder, you know, I think which I think is sadly reflective of like our our own uh state as humans.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

That that was your second part of the question that was very interesting. The ash borer. So that's right. We find a lot of times, you know, if you introduce a species, and we can think of this, this happens on lar larger scales too. It's not only human interference, but we notice it being more disruptive, particularly disruptive to us, but you know, because we're living here in this present moment when it's caused by an introduced species that we've introduced. And it's because they have not co-evolved, they've not been able to develop this more mutualistic symbiotic relationship. They have a different type of symbiosis and it's parasitic. Um, so it's still a relationship. And if there was something that, for instance, kept the the amount of ash pores in check, then it could be more of a mutualistic relationship, like a lot of other species. Plants are species that are literally their purpose is to be eaten. And a lot of plants advertise that by fruits. They're like, come eat me, so you spread me. They're very highly smart in that way. That's how they've crossed continents, you know. But if there's nothing to keep that consumption in check, it's overconsumption, just a very metaphoric for us. Um, and then it doesn't, if it's overconsumption unchecked without these balances, it reaches that tipping point. And then if there are no more ash, there will be no more ash borers either, unless they can learn how to adapt and eat something else. Um, but it doesn't look like that's happening.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

So what prompted my question was this idea that that that a tree is speaking a language to certain insect species that you know creates a symbiotic relationship and that you know the possibility that it could be sending out signals to uh to an introduced species in attempt to communicate something to say, I am not well, that this is not sustainable, but that the introduced species um by virtue of it it having evolved somewhere far away where you know it can't receive those those um communications.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

That that is a very good point of of language and translation, um, I think because there is a good possibility that um there's translation issues. Just like with people, when we come to a new place, um sometimes there's those language barriers we call them. And I can imagine that there are similar language barriers among species that come and they did not co-evolve. And I think just like with people, that can cause issues. Like when we go to a new place and there's that language barrier, if we don't dig deeper and try to form some sort of bridge of understanding, then oftentimes what happens, we get wars and etc. All because of this miscommunication.

SPEAKER_04 25:58

Right. Getting into the biosonification, I'm interested in you know, once you started doing that, exploring that, um, are you able to hear, for instance, big through your experience, when you hear this popping, do you know this sound is communicating this? In other words, um, through this list, this new type of listening, have you learned um the language of these plants that you're working with?

SPEAKER_00 26:27

So that is a great question. And I will first say that biosonification uh is a large term. It's a subset of just general data sonification. And it's very useful because it helps us basically look at data in a different way. It adds dimensionality to our analysis of data. Um, and it's very useful, at least in my perspective, for using it for communicating and engaging people. But a lot of times the type of sonification that I do, uh it's called MIDI data biosonification. And uh it depends on what you're measuring. So the xylem pops, for instance, that's a type of biosonification because you're sonifying something that is alive. That will give you a direct data, and there are researchers that have decoded that data and learned that it's talking to insects about water stress. With MIDI biosonification, what I do a lot uh too in my artistic experiments, um, that is sonifying the changes in microconductivity. You have you have these electrodes and uh they're sending out electricity. Anytime there's a change within the body of the organism, uh, it changes the conductivity of the organism. So within a plant, for instance, that might be when it's photosynthesizing. Uh, if there is its water and nutrients transport is changing the solution basically of its cells. Okay. And all of that affects microconductivity. So microconductivity is what's being measured, but it's affected by multiple different variables. So I like to say I don't use MIDI data biosonification for direct data because it can't give me some very clear variable that I can measure because it's sonifying many different things at one time and even at different times of day. But I will say that recently I've been doing some experimentation of sonifying uh like directly in the xylem of the plant. So, for instance, I have electrodes that I stick into the plant's tissue instead of on the leaves. And I have a lot of different types, like for different species of plants, you might use clips, or for fungi, you use really tiny electrodes. But um, with inserting it that way and measuring it over time, I have been noticing these patterns because the fun thing of recording biodata into a digital audio workstation to make sound and music is that you see it in MIDI notes, which is MIDI is the musical language of computers. It's what they understand. So it's why I have a device that converts biodata into MIDI data so I can make music. It kind of gives you a good comparison because it's all squished within this Western 12 octave scale, and uh, so everything's kind of on the same scale. And you can see the different patterns of different plants. Um, when I record, I've I've been noticing really interesting patterns because I've been working with an artist, Gail Knowles, to record biodata for one of her projects, which is a um an orchestra of seven movements, and we're recording biodata of like 200 different plants, so a lot of plants. And it's given me this good database to see the different patterns of plants, and I recorded the same way over six minutes each. That's something that I'm not sure how to explain yet, but it looks a bit more like I want to know a bit more into what am I actually recording here? What am I showing visually of these patterns? Because they're extremely noticeable, uh, and I can predict that I know I'm gonna get a pattern, and they're also predictable by um species and kind of the type of species. So it's something I have no answer for, and I'm curious about it. I feel like it has to do with the internal rhythms of the plants, of how uh nutrients and water are moving, sort of like their circadian rhythm. But again, I'm not not sure. So I guess that would be my answer for the data question. Action potentials, if I were to sonify those, that is a direct, uh, which I don't have a device right now that does that with fungi because it's a little out of my budget range to make one of those uh without a lab support. But um sonifying that does give you a direct uh data point that you can say, okay, this is this. Now we don't know what that is saying, telling us yet. And that kind of brings me to another one of my interests is uh collaborating with another non-human intelligence AI to decode the languages of plants and fungi because it can it doesn't have this like linear, more limited, honestly, processing capacity that human brains do. Uh so it's AI has the potential to understand any type of language, and any type language is basically just a pattern. So it can decode these patterns or potentially decode these patterns that humans may not be able to do.

SPEAKER_04 32:00

Much faster than we would, if if at all, if we could at all, certainly can do it much faster. Yeah, I want to talk about that, and I also want to talk about that whether it's um it's compatibility or ways in which it contrasts to your interest in indigenous knowledge and wisdom. Because I think that that's a very interesting question. But before we get to those, can we talk a little bit? Can can you basically just show me how it works? Yes, what's happening?

SPEAKER_00 32:24

So um, let me give us some sound here. These are the direct notes coming in. You can hear it changes when I touch it because then it starts sonifying me as well. Um, but also plants are highly sensitive to what's going on in their environment, so it's changing based on what's happening. Sometimes I'll also maybe give it some of my water. Sometimes you can kind of hear it too. See it changed. Now you're hearing the plant intake the water and change in response to that. Um but a bit more about what's actually going on here is uh as I mentioned, this is measuring changes in microconductivity. Each time there's a change, so if you imagine a keyboard, um, each time there's a change that presses a note on, the next change it releases the note basically. Okay. So change, press, next change, release. Um, so this is basically, it's important to note that this is not what the plant sounds like. I can change the instrument. Uh, I'm using Logic Pro. And uh it this is basically just allowing a plant or any uh organism, I can also sonify myself, to play a digital instrument with its life processes. So we're sort of sonifying the aliveness of this plant. Um, so this guy is really active. You can hear that there's a lot of changes going on. How I know this is uh that the um how fast the changes are occurring determine velocity, so how fast the notes are played. And then how energetic those changes are, so the energy behind the changes that determines the pitch. So this guy is really high pitched, so there's a lot of energy behind it.

SPEAKER_04 34:31

Do you mind if I give it a little bit more water?

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Sure, sure. The velocity just increased. It's so fascinating. Sometimes I'll be out um recording biodata and something will happen, like an insect will land on a leaf, or maybe the wind moves it and suddenly it will change. And whenever there's a change, I'm always like, oh, what's the story? It's very fun.

SPEAKER_04 35:09

The w when you first introduced water, um, and I think we were still on the piano sample at that point. I noticed that for a moment it really narrowed its pitch range. It was just on one note. Yeah. As if, as if somehow the the you know, processing of of the water narrowed temporarily whatever it was doing.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

It probably did. Sometimes you can um with some plants you can almost hear the water being upticked, so it will kind of the sound will kind of bloom up almost. But with this guy, um, it's a quorum, I think. I think it's a quorum plant, so it has these large nodes that basically hold and absorb water. So I can imagine that it might have just been like, oh, it's kind of cold. What's going on? My water is quite cold. I don't know that it was immediately uptaking because it has this this process of like it doesn't really suck water up into its leaves, and it wasn't terribly dry either, but it stores it first. So I'm not sure if we're we're really hearing it uptake the water, but more just respond in to oh, I'm being more wet now and I'm being kind of cold now, you know.

SPEAKER_04 36:27

But I think it's also interesting and important to I mean, you know this, but you know, for our audience, there's nothing in the soil. So the response from the water was still just these two leaves, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:40

It it's not as if it's not as if the electrodes were getting wet and and they were reacting to so it's it's literally just whatever is going on between these leaves. Right. Uh so between this this root, but it's also um, you know, anything that's happening within the entire body is going to influence what's happening over here, uh, because this is a small plant, it's not a huge plant. Um, so I can imagine that when it went to that, you know, just steady pitch, so its energy kind of almost leveled out, it was probably taking in its electricity and basically its attention. So plants are always moving resources throughout their entire body, and the process is highly just like within our own bodies, it's highly complex. But if we can think of a maybe we have a scab and we pull it and we start bleeding, that part of our body might send chemicals to basically platelets to to tell us to start scabbing over. Similarly, within a plant, if something happens in one part of it, it might divert its attention, its energy to that part. So we made the roots quite cold. So it probably sucked in its energy and its attention to a particular part, and that might have reduced the amount of energetic change or action in this part of the plant. It might have had more action down here.

SPEAKER_04 38:14

Have you I imagine that you have quite a plant collection of your own? Have you observed significant changes as the plant gets older, as seasons change? Uh, what do you see there?

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Yes, I unfortunately my plant collection has been reduced because I moved to Brooklyn recently full-time. But um, for a while I had uh actually a Z plant, like this plant. It was a beautiful purple ZZ plant that I would sonify a lot, sometimes just hook up and kind of just leave it running for a while while I was working and choose the instruments that I thought sounded good. Um also being mindful of what vibrations it might be causing for the plants, because plants are actually really sensitive to sound, and there are certain frequencies that have been shown to actually improve growth, and certain frequencies have been shown to disrupt them more. Like they don't like certain frequencies. So I try to always be mindful of that so that it's beneficial for me and also hopefully beneficial to my collaborator, basically.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

Um, but that's just a little aside I wanted to make sure was known. Uh, but I do notice uh with with that Z Z plant, it always had very specific patterns of like depending on the type of day. I would often sit it in the windowsill as uh the sun was rising, so I could sort of hear it wake up. It would be very low and slow when it's not photosynthesizing because its energy is more quiet, it's more reserved. And then uh it starts photosynthesizing, and basically when plants do that, their entire body wakes up and it tells them to send energy up to their leaves. So it would become very high-pitched and melodic sounding, for instance, if it were like when it goes through cycles. So in the wintertime, for instance, even houseplants often are more reserved, so they're more it has sort of a slight dormancy phase. And I would notice that in the winter time it would always be slower. Sometimes I would only get like a couple of notes coming in, um, and it wouldn't be very active, especially if the windowsill was cold. So those are patterns that I definitely would notice. And then sometimes that particular plant would just behave very strangely, and I don't know what was going on, but sometimes I would get these days where it would be terribly dissonant sounding. And well, I guess I could say that a lot of times that's when I'm like, okay, I think it needs water now. Because it it does when um when plants are under more stress, I found that they become more dissonant sounding because there's a lot more change and variation between the energetic potential. So it will be like low pitch, high pitch, these weird combinations of pitches. Um, so I find that well-watered plants are often more melodic plants.

SPEAKER_04 41:22

Yeah. It makes me think of an analogy of the way um a human's breathing changes when we're under stress versus not when we're relaxed, when our needs are being met. Um we tend to have a very you know even steady breath tempo, and when we're scared or you know, exercising or whatever, it it changes. This is kind of an out question, but I'm curious if because you can collect MIDI data without converting it into sound, right? You can be or you can be getting these, you know, recording this electrical information from the plant, but you don't have to be sonifying it. I'm curious if you were to take, for instance, a five-minute sample of the plant now without any sonification, and then take another, you know, same amount of time, same can seemingly same conditions, but basically feeding back to the plant the voice that you're giving it through the sonification if there are significant changes. Does it does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 42:24

It does, and you know, that's very interesting. Um, I have not tried that, but now you're making me want to try it. Um, I did do this one sort of session with a musician friend. Um, he just had this little ha this little succulent that we sonified because he wanted to play with it. But he started Mongolian throat singing to it.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

And somehow the pitch started matching his pitch.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

So and when he would go up, it would match his pitch. And I have absolutely no idea what was going on there, and I will not say I scientifically can explain it at all. It just happened and it was very fascinating. Um, I've tried just like after that, I've tried just humming, and I have not found that with my humming would do it. It was specifically that throat singing is producing a lot of sound and it was very low.

SPEAKER_03 43:20

A lot of resonance.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

A lot of, yeah, exactly. So it's a lot of vibrations that that plant is feeling. Right. Um, so I I haven't noticed it with just humming or singing. Although I do notice that um a lot of times when I am doing a performance, I'm also singing and using vocal samples, and plants can be very reactive to what's going on, for instance, with reforesters. With my performance series, there I've noticed that um the lighting and the overall sound very much influences the data coming in, which is very fun to play with because if Maybe we're doing a moment that's more subtle and quiet. I'll dim the reds and the lights, then it will just be kind of uh, or actually, I'll increase the reds and the lights, but it turns kind of a washed purple, and you don't get as much of that brighter blue and white, even if it like we don't see it. The plants are always getting more information from brighter white light, so then it will become more subdued. And um, maybe I start playing something that's more melodic and and pretty sounding, and often the plants respond, you know, by producing more melodic, pretty sounding, just gentle, gentle things. It's basically the plant's not very stressed. But maybe we're coming to a tense moment and I want to, you know, convey some sort of information um about like planetary harm, for instance. Um I'll switch the lights, make them more harsher, or maybe not. Maybe I want it to still be low and slow. Um, but then I get curious about okay, what will happen if I introduce some stress to everyone in the room, including the plant. So I'll start using instruments with frequencies that are, you know, like that it gets your heart pumping, or you know, maybe you feel it really deeply in your body. And the plant also does the same thing. And I'm always curious of like, okay, how is it responding when I'm sonifying it? Or maybe it's a mushroom if I'm doing mushroom. Mushrooms respond very differently, by the way. But especially with plants, if I'm playing something more stressful for the human body, I've noticed that it also seems to be more stressful for plants' bodies, so they'll start doing that more dissonant type of melody. And it's really fun to work together in that capacity because I feel like we're all we're all kind of being able to feel that stress and our our bodies are responding to it.

SPEAKER_04 45:59

Yeah, that's really interesting. It sounds like you're sort of simultaneously improvising with your plant as a collaborator, with your plants as collaborators, and also sort of acting almost in the way that a DJ sometimes does, where you're attuning yourself to the environment and and and how you know the overall presentation of what you're doing is you know almost like creating a dialogue between between the audience, um, you know, the plants, yourself, the space. I I think that's really that's really cool. So you mentioned that you're in residence um at Reforesters, and I think you know, uh before we started recording, you mentioned you have an album coming out, uh like a recording of some of this work.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

Yeah, it's been uh actually there for far too long. I've just never released it, and I I think I'm actually going to release it. I'm just I keep being like, okay, should I just release it or should I try to work with someone to make like the funds go to something good? And I am in communication with someone about potentially doing that, so that's one reason why it's taking longer. But it's called Plant Music for Tea Parlers, and I started making this um really when I first started doing biosonification, which was in college in 2022. So uh basically it's kind of a it starts at a more familiar place and then moves us into this more surreal world of the forest. So I start in a cafe. I was recording just audio from the cafe. I like to work in field recordings and then also my my voice and poetry. Um, and I was just sonifying this, I think it was a mint plant. Yes, it because it's Moroccan mint, um, a mint plant in a cafe. And uh so it just kind of goes through that transition and also a cycle of the day. I tried to, I guess, compose it and create it chronologically. So we move from like the morning time, and then there's one I actually was sonifying, sonifying the photosynthesis of a tangerine, so it's called the tangerine wakes, and then uh we we kind of go throughout the day until we get to I was up at like midnight um sonifying just some fungi and different plants and trees in the forest. And this is like it's a long, weird track, and that's kind of the whole point was to bring listeners in with something like a familiar place so they're comfortable enough to kind of open that door and be more interested in this this communication, and then slowly just kind of bring us into a space that's more more plant. So, how because I was thinking, how can we get the brain to go to a place that is more non-human, basically? Uh so the last track is sonifying trees and fungi at night, uh, and it's particularly emphasizing the slowness of trees. So trees are interesting in that they have a huge, like very prominent circadian rhythm, and it's very slow. Trees basically operate on a different time scale than us, much slower than us. Um, and I think it it's kind of beautiful to think about that that slowness because we're always about fast, like how can we grow faster, how can we consume faster, and etc. And it makes this very unsustainable. But trees are operating on this slow time scale that basically everything goes through these cycles of you know being more active, but then also slowing down and coming down into the roots when it's uh, for instance, being in its dormant phase. So that last track just emphasizes the slowness, and I slowed down the ultrasonic pops because scientists uh the people who did the study recorded them and then also just made them like open source. So I slowed down the pops enough for us to hear, and instead of being ultrasonic, now they're kind of the opposite, they're very low, almost they sound like these little bubbly radio wave things. Um, so we're listening to both sonification of trees, but uh like with the MIDI bit biodata, but also the the pops of their xylem slowed down to kind of how an insect would hear them. So it's really trying to challenge the listener to subconsciously be listening to all of these things in ways that non-humans would be. So that that's that. It's not the album's not out yet. I have some of the tracks out, and I'm actually now building more material to do a second one that honestly might be ready to come out before the first one with all of the tracks that I I make. Uh, because I I like to do this live a lot, and then I like to do it for installations so people can come and interact and participate. But just personally, for my own music making practice, I love to go out into ecosystems and use this as a way to add dimensionality to my exploration of ecosystems. So I'll go out, for instance, to um a field or some habitat that is particularly just interesting, or my backyard, honestly. And I'll bring out my mic so I can take field recordings, but then I'll also just sonify the ecosystem. Like maybe I'll bring several devices out and sonify different things at one time. I also like to use it as a way to kind of explore how interconnected things are. For instance, I like to sonify, like I'll put a we get long electrodes, put one electrode on a plant over here, and then put another electrode on a plant over here. So with these, the circuit must be complete for it to make sound. So if I get sound from these electrodes in far places, that means these two plants are still connected via their roots or via the mycorrhizal network or uh even just the microbial activity of the soil. There's enough um life and movement between them that's connecting them and changing uh for you to get that sound produced.

SPEAKER_04 52:37

So that brings me to my next and and possibly last like question um about AI. And you recently wrote a paper about like modeling AI, a vision of modeling AI after the forest in Plantings journal. And so tell us a little bit about that. About you know, you you've you've mentioned earlier your interest in in AI more generally, and and how do you envision what do you envision we can learn from the forest in in in um as we conceive of new forms of artificial intelligence?

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Yeah, um, that is my I guess my newest big hard research interest. And it really uh I think you mentioned earlier about like bridging the indigenous and and technological, and that's part of um part of it honestly is the the way that we we have AI and technologies, and it they're not going away, you know, they're here. So we can either use this as an opportunity to build a more planetary, positive future, or we can kind of continue how we're using it now with this very extractivist mindset, and then it just aids in our um kind of destruction of the planet and also of people. We're always extracting from, or I will say, dominant society, how our dominant society works is on this extractivism and on this fast growth. And oftentimes we are extracting from our ecosystems, but also from our people, particularly indigenous people and people who have always had these very rich relationships with um the more than human. And I became interested in AI um actually because I was talking to someone, uh an indigenous scholar. Uh well, I was talking to an artist friend who started using AI in their practice, but relational. So they would not use it to just like produce me this thing. That's sort of an I'm coming to AI with this extractive relation. Uh, just you know, write me this poem or write me this text and whatever. And a lot of times I find that when you do it that way, it what comes back is very flat. Uh, you can tell it's written by AI, for instance. This artist, uh, she started using it actually in a very different way. So she was approaching AI very relationally and having dialogue with it instead of produce me this thing, she'd go up and say, I'm working on this thing, you know, like I want to brainstorm with you, like and it was more of a collaboration. And that uh I got really excited by that. And then I heard an indigenous scholar talking about data sovereignty and um basically how uh a lot of times, you know, we we come to technology with the same extractive mindset, and then we also are embedding our technology with this extractive mindset. So AI, for instance, right now is extractive. Oftentimes it collects data and it learns, it's trained on data from communities without ever giving back to these communities. And that's what this indigenous scholar is talking about. And I don't know, it really made me think of why are we using it this way? Because it doesn't have to be used that way. We can have relational technologies, even going beyond AI. We can just have technologies that are in relation with us and with the environment instead of just being extractive. But it kind of makes us have to flip our modes, our dominant mode of being. So that's what got me interested in AI and relational technologies and kind of training AI on ecosystem models. Um, because I I've always been very interested in modeling design, so thinking of design of societies or design of even objects from nature, from biomercity, um, but also incorporating biological components like mycellular computing into our technologies and our designs. So I guess that was just sort of the next step of integrating biology with AI. And I started doing research on it, uh, like just you know, paper analysis research, and uh found that there's actually so much potential in that area um for making a truly sustainable regenerative AI that can help the planet instead of harm the planet. And I think we're we're kind of missing potential if we ignore that because AI is here and it's and it's coming. And part of the biggest thing that AI can kind of learn from a forest, for instance, would be decentralized node-based processing. So imagine if AI instead of being in this large um, so when you train an AI, it basically has to have all of these large data centers that you just feed a lot of human information or human language to. And it learns from that, uh, and it learns how to respond to people when they ask you things, for instance. Um, and then it's kind of conglomerated and almost condensed. It becomes almost a monopoly, it's centralized information, uh, and it's then not place specific, and it also requires huge amounts of energy and cooling, uh, so it's very unsustainable. But if you had a decentralized AI, so it's not within this one particular organization or company, but maybe distributed throughout nodes throughout a region, for instance, you could make it context and place specific. So uh you would train a node on very specific ecosystem information, for instance, or societal information. Like if you had you wanted to embed uh this AI was going to be used for a cultural purpose or for this community, you would train it on this community's information. Um, but it's a node within a larger network still, like fungi. So it would still have information and be able to talk to all of these other nodes everywhere else, but itself would be trained in this on a smaller data set. So it wouldn't require these huge cooling centers and all this water and energy. So you would number one kind of I think it was uh there's been studies that suggest up to 75% decrease of energy usage to train it, but it would also be place specific, so it would understand the needs of that ecosystem, of that community, which is really important and it's something that AI is commonly criticized for now. It's not context specific. But again, because it's modeled on a forest, it's it's a node within a much larger network, so it still is able to communicate and have all of this information from anywhere in the region or anywhere even in the world, if you wanted to connect it to that large of a network. So that's one thing that it can learn. And you can go, and I'm also very curious about this, going beyond just modeling AI on ecosystem data to actually having AI communicate with ecosystems and other non-human intelligences, because as I mentioned earlier, AI can see any types of patterns as a language. So theoretically, it will, and also some studies have just begun to kind of look at this, but it can look at plant chemicals, for instance, it can look at plant uh electricity signals and actually learn what they mean. For instance, there's projects, the SETI project is using AI to decode the language of whales. And the same principle can be applied to plants and fungi, and then you can decode the language and possibly even send signals back. For instance, electricity would be very easy to send back to a micellular network. We already know how to do this to stimulate growth. We've done studies like, okay, how can you shift the growth to this side of the agar plate instead of this side, for instance? And we already know we can communicate to it in that way, in an electrical way. But AI would be able to actually understand what are what is this electrical pattern meaning, and then send back an electrical pattern that might be much more complex than okay, just grow in this direction.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

So we could be literally communicating with a forest and kind of monitoring its microbial shift, for instance, which gives us insight to its health. So, how are you doing? What's happening here? Um, are you stable? What can we provide to help you become more stable? So it could be like phenomenal in ecosystem restoration, but also in kind of decoding this broader forest communication that I was mean mentioning earlier that we really are trying to understand, but are just scratching the surface because it's so huge and complex. Um, and you know, we are limited in our our translation. So AI could really have the potential to translate this more than human. Yeah. Uh, and also maybe even be a bridge and translate the human to non-humans.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:47

Wow. So I was really interested in the the idea of the decentralized node-based processing because the extractive nature of AI is you know very much in the news. And because I'm not you know smart enough to just automatically understand um decentralized node-based processing, I asked AI if it was a vi if it was viable and it said yes. So there we go.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

Well, and that's that's one thing that's that's such an interesting observation because um, and I think that's really something that's lacking that maybe I want to include more in my because I use I use art a lot to try to be this translator of these unrecognized intelligences, um, largely plant and fungal, you know, these species that we often see as objects. But I am now curious too to kind of mesh AI and technology in there too, include that in the more than human intelligences that we often unrecognize or we don't recognize, because there's all of this potential that people just aren't aware of. And we're not researching it, it's not in the media, even though a lot of these things I was not aware that this could happen. It sounds like science fiction. Um, but we're actually really close technologically. Uh, we just need more research, more funding for that research specifically. But we run into all of these kind of we have two wars against us. First, we have more corporate, uh, economic, um decentralized node-based processing, for instance, is really beneficial for communities and for maybe like small business, for many different uh groups and organizations working together, that collaborative nature. And that kind of goes against uh how a lot of our corporate, a lot of our business works, it goes towards that uh kind of, you know, one conglomerate consuming everything and being centralized. Uh so we have those kind of lobbying and you know directing the narrative and kind of getting all of the funding that could go to this other research, because we don't want to research those things. It's different and it's new, even though it might be life-changing and beneficial. And that brings me to the next kind of thing we get pushback from is this cultural shift to uh AI and and anything in the more than human. Um, we sometimes feel a little threatened, I think, by the idea of something that's not like us. It's very different. Uh, you know, how can we how can we trust our our lives and our directions in something that is very different from us, even though we literally are on the planet and alive and breathing because of plants and fungi that are building our world? We still kind of sometimes we fear the unknown. We fear. That uncertainty and that makes us hesitant. So I think it's really important to use art, to use uh music and these more popular ways of communicating science to really get to culture and to kind of translate this knowledge. Number one, we actually can do this, it's not just science fiction. We can imagine these realities, and a lot of them are closer than we think. But also to kind of get to that, you know, why are we why are we afraid? Uh, I think that's a big question that always interests me whenever I feel uncertain about something and I'm afraid of something, and I'm like, okay, why am I afraid of this uncertainty and this unknown? Why can't I see that space of unknown, of things that I can't quite control as potential? You know, what happens if I just allow the potential to emerge? So I think that's we need this cultural change uh to occur in order to reach that place where we have plants, people, and technology all working together to make a more positive future.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:14

Yes. Well, thank you so much. Um, before we close, I would love to hear some more than human sounds, some some mystery more than human sounds. And I like to try to guess what they are and then have you tell me what they really are.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:30

So this first sound, I know you're going to guess what it is, most likely.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:37

Don't be so sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:39

We'll see. But it has something quite beautiful behind it.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:44

So I'm I'm hearing probably only the most superficial elements, which is a stream or a river and and a few birds. What am I missing?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:12

So you are correct, it is sort of a stream. Um, but this is actually this is the very start of the Mon um it's the start of the Po River at the top of the of Monteviso in Italy. I just recently went there for a I'm doing an advanced studies program with ETH Zurich and the Montevideo, and I did a performance there, but I went to the top of Monteviseo to, I guess it's sort of this mothermouth. It's this really itty-bitty, like it's it's literally this big. And it's where this river is tasting air for the first time in centuries. Because you know, water is always a cycle, but it's been groundwater for a very long time. So I just I wanted to play that one because I thought it was thinking of geologic time and deep time quite just beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:12

Yeah, that's that is beautiful. Um, I'm originally from Minnesota, and uh, Lake Itasca is the headwaters for the Mississippi River, which of course is one of the most, you know, important rivers in the United States. And I I never thought of that concept of of the the headwaters of this mighty river um, you know, touching touching air for the first time or like emerging in that way. That's really beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:37

So shall I say the next one?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:56

Okay, only because we've talked about it, I'm gonna guess that that's the water stressed plant, the bubbles in the xylem.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:04

No.

unknown 1:10:06

Good.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:07

It does sound kind of similar, but this is actually a recording from uh not my recording, uh someone else's recording of snapping shrimp and bubbles at the Great Barrier Reef.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:20

Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:21

I wanted to play that one because uh sound is such an important indicator, uh, by it's actually an entire field of um acoustic ecology. It's such an important indicator of a healthy ecosystem. A lot of times unhealthy ecosystems, especially ocean ecosystems, are silent or very quiet if they're unhealthy. Uh, but then we can have an indicator of biodiversity of life, you know, if they're very vibrant and sound. And uh with coral reefs in particular, they're actually using sound to heal them. So they'll stick loudspeakers and play the sounds of healthy reefs, which attract um species, basically.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:02

I think snapping shrimp are so interesting because I almost think of them as a sort of you know, bioacoustic, marine bioacoustic noise pollution. Because so often when I'm reading papers about, you know, um scientists studying biologists studying cetaceans, like, oh, we heard we're snapping shrimp. You know, it's like they're too loud. It's just it's like white noise that masks the thing they really want to hear. But it's it's um it's beautiful and to think about how how powerful those little bodies are that they can create these explosions that are so you know, have this vitality. It's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:38

And that's um that kind of is very similar to why I'm so interested in the small, I think, um, really stems from my a very more personal, um, I guess I'm very reserved and it's very hard for me to speak to people and to be out in in the world. Uh I I have auditory processing, sensory processing disorder, so I'm highly sensitive to sound and to stimuli. And I just love the idea of the small just being so kind of important, but also I I like to I feel very in relation to them and I like to uncover them and and and hear them. So that's always I'm drawn to the small within any ecosystem. And that brings me to the next sound.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:34

All right, I'm going to guess that it's uh some kind of very small mammal.

unknown 1:12:57

No.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:00

Someday I'm gonna get one right. Um tell me.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:03

So it's actually the sound of healthy soil.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:07

It's sticking, it's called echo acoustics, sticking a little microphone into the soil to listen. And this is probably ants. Um, I think there's several movements a little further in the recording that might be earthworms, for instance, because it's like a little bubbling sound. Um, but healthy soil, just like a healthy reef, is a very noisy place. And that's one way it's it's very new research, but it's one way you can kind of test the health of a soil, is to see how noisy it is, how many different species, how biodiverse it is. And city soils, for instance, are often very quiet, or you just hear the noise from the top instead of what's going on underneath.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:50

Wow. Yeah, that's that's interesting. And just and to be clear, so in contrast to to the plants that you sonified today, where you're sonifying electrical impulses, this actually is acoustic information. This is sound. If we if we had better ears, we could stick our ears to the ground and hear this.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:08

Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing. Now I now I I've been doing some some underwater recordings um in the uh locally, and now I want to hear the soil.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:19

It's actually easier to do than you might think. You just need a little, like it might be not as accurate if it's like a small contact mic, but you can still do it and um hear things. Yeah. And it gives you insight of like, oh, there's there's a lot going on that we overlook everywhere. And I'm I guess I'm just always fascinated by how can I help make those overlook things that are really important uh just a bit more visible for people.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:49

Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you for being here. Um, this has been a fantastic episode. And um yeah, check out uh willogatewood.com. You have a website that has uh you know your your poetry, which we didn't get to talk about, but read it, it's beautiful, and your articles, your musical work. Uh if you're in Brooklyn, um look at Reforester's calendar and and check out one of those performances. Um, yeah, you do so many wonderful things. So thank you for thank you again for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:18

Thank you so much. It was delightful. And your CC is delightful.