Symbiotic Resonances: Sounding More-than-human Worlds

Drawing connections between philosophy, art, and science, this interdisciplinary project explores the intersubjective relationships among humans, plants, fungi, and other nonhumans by analyzing their sonic enactments and environments. It examines how natural, anthropogenic, and architectural elements of North American soundscapes shape contemporary conceptions of subjectivity and subject formation.

The project integrates diverse methodological frameworks to explore the political, ethical, and social implications of human-plant-fungal-nonhuman relations, and to pursue better ways of living in the Anthropocene era. It seeks to develop a politics of ecological action and a “relational ecological sacred” (Loichot) that includes the nonhuman, and to promote a mentality and culture of communalism, interspecies symbiosis, and “intra-active entanglement” (Barad). 

The project analyzes soundscapes as sites where human and nonhuman agencies fold together through processes of transduction (Helmreich) and examines below-ground mycorrhizal networks as sites of interspecies communication, memory formation, and distributed intelligence. One case study focuses on how trees at the Harvard Divinity School—which form a multispecies set through root and mycorrhizal networks—communicate and respond to stimuli like light, vibrations, water, and air pollution as elements of such soundscapes. 

Additionally, the project aspires to make signals beyond human registers audible. Learning to listen to signals such as photosynthesis, nutrient movements, and root networks raises questions about plant and fungal subjectivities and what sound (vibration, resonance, reverberation) means for complex symbiotic interrelationships. By attributing subjectivity and knowledge to plant and fungal life, we can ask new questions about how anthropogenic sounds may impact plants, fungi, and the entangled living networks that they share with humans. 

Project point person: Elitza Koeva