I was a mosquito once, carried by the breeze in the Grizedale forest in the north of England. As I drifted between the trees, surrounded by the chatter of the forest, swirling waves of pink and purple engulfed me. Plumes of carbon dioxide and oxygen as the forest breathed, mesmerized by the beauty never before glimpsed by human eyes. And I was in awe.
Then I was eaten by a dragonfly. I became a dragonfly and discovered a magical world in which the entire forest unfurled like a film in slow motion, yet faster than your iPhone camera could capture it. Through my dragonfly eyes, I took in my surroundings with pretty much a full spectrum of light, unlike my human self had ever been able to perceive.
These forays into becoming something other than human came about as part of our experiential art piece called “In the Eyes of the Animal,” which I developed with my creative partners, Barney and Robin, alongside the members of our art collective, Marshmallow Laser Feast. Our aim was to translate the sensory perception of different species -- a mosquito, a dragonfly, a frog and an owl -- so we can more deeply understand how they see, hear and feel.
It was for us a step into umwelt, a concept coined by the pioneering biologist Jakob Von Uexküll to describe the unique sensory world of an organism. Human notion of reality is just one among millions. Each species has its own extraordinary and unknowable experience of reality based on the unique ways their senses translate the world around them. In essence, your and my umwelt fundamentally differs from the umwelt of a mosquito or a dragonfly. Marcel Proust once wrote "The only true voyage of discovery is to behold the universe through the eyes of another."
Our voyage of discovery into animal kingdom led us to plant kingdom and eventually to trees where miracles appear in every level of magnification. All we need to do is to look closely. In 2016, we found ourselves standing in front of a giant sequoia tree in Sequoia National Park in California. These giant trees are portals through which you leave your human self-importance behind and embody something much larger, much stranger, much more than human.
All I could think of was, "What is it like to be a tree?" What is it like to be one of the largest organisms that has ever existed? One that has endured more than 2,500 years? How does it feel to host a vast web of relationships that anchor an entire ecosystem?
Now step with me into this giant as we peer through the bark, the vascular system of the tree reveals itself. Infinitely complex patterns and relationships, connect all forms of life into a tapestry of interdependence. Carbon and water, more than 1,000 liters of water, in fact, flow freely through the phloem and xylem tubes carry it along. We ascend to the canopy. Among the neon green moss and the lichen-covered branches, we shrink in size and sit upon a pine needle. A photon of light hits the surface, water turns into oxygen and the life we know it materializes in front of us.
This extraordinary journey of water inspired us to create our multi-sensory, mixed-reality installation called “Tree Hugger.” With a team of scientists, programmers, engineers, LiDAR scanners and scent makers, we immerse ourselves in the inner workings of a sequoia to render visible what was otherwise invisible to human eyes. Mileece L'Anson, composer and a musician, recorded human and plant bioelectrical signals to give us a symphony, a soundscape composed in collaboration with the flora. In fact, that's what you've been hearing all along. Participants wore a haptic vest to feel these vibrations as if their own heartbeat, bringing us a step closer, imagining what it is like to be a tree.
When we contemplate the relationship between our breathing cells and the breathing planet, we encounter this great question. Where does my body end and where does the world begin? As you ask yourself this question, I'd like you to pay attention to your breath. Inhale slowly. And exhale. Feel your tree-like lungs filling and emptying with a rhythmic flow of air. Oxygenated blood reaches your heart. Your heart pumps like a murmuration of birds, feeding rivers from the center outwards to touch every cell in your body. Under your skin, you realize you are much like a forest ecosystem.
In modern industrial societies, we tend to limit our being to our body. Shaped by the confines of your skin, your body is you and that’s where your you ends. Yet, when we trace our outbreath, the boundary between inside and outside, between self and other, blurs. The air we breathe transcends boundaries, sustaining life as it flows between all beings.
We take anywhere from 17,000 to 30,000 breaths a day. A third of those breaths coming from the forests and the rest coming from the oceans. This puts us in an intimate relationship with the trees thousands of times a day. You might think you've never met a giant sequoia before, but in fact, you've been enmeshed and entangled with one every moment you've been alive. In other words, we are as much trees as trees are us.
Our multisensory, mixed-reality installation called “We Live in an Ocean of Air” started with this realization. By translating the umwelt of trees for human understanding, it underscores the bond between humans and the wider family of life through respiration. As participants follow their outbreath into a tree, they become one. Now notice your outbreath again. Carbon dioxide that leaves your body lands on a leaf. Opens its pores to drink it in. Carbon travels through the phloem into the branches, down the tree trunk and even all the way down to the soil. Here, trees are in ancient cooperation with the kingdom of fungi. These fine threads of mycelium, those intelligent, root-like fungal networks that nurture and feed an entire ecosystem.
By simply tracing our outbreath, we realize the reciprocity between all major kingdoms of life pulsing with one harmonious rhythm. This exploration of rich and diverse life that exists beneath the surface of the soil is the next journey we are embarking on. As fungi capture the public imagination through groundbreaking research, we are very much inspired by the works of Suzanne Simard, Merlin Sheldrake and many others. “The Wood Wide Web,” which is the working title, will bring us into the primordial relationship between trees, plants, animals and fungi, and aim to dismantle the myth of human separation from the natural world.
As an artist collective, we seek to find emotional resonance in scientific stories, stories that connect us to the more-than-human world and, coupled with emerging technologies, deepen our understanding of what is it to be something other than human. Modern science is revealing something Indigenous knowledge has always held to be true. That what is outside of us is not separate from us. We need this ancient wisdom more than ever today and it compels us to use our technology to both honor and enhance our relationship with the web of beings.
The ability to perceive the world through the eyes and ears of other beings, through the phloem and xylem of trees, even reconnects us, humans, to the fantastic and richly diverse network of organisms that make up our shared Earth. It gives us a greater appreciation of what is it to be non-human, which in turn lets us more fully grasp what is it to be human, too. And it reminds us with awe that we are all but extensions of one another, from tree to tree, to you and me.
Thank you.
(Applause and cheers)
