Pieter Verheesand has designed for this project a battery powered amplification setup that consists of 8 regular speakers with moving shells on top and 4 subwoofers.
Calling Songs by Johannes Westendorp
Calling Songs is a research project from Johannes Westendorp, a dutch musician and writer, that explores the possibilities of making music live along with insect and amphibian choirs on location. Following a sonic intuition, partly inspired by electronic sounds from analog gear that at times resembled insect chirping, Westendorp thought about bringing these sounds to the foreground and exploring them as musical material for performances.
The whole research consists of several parts: the exploration of the function of insect and amphibian calls, finding out regulations related to working on location, the investigation of the different species that the researcher may encounter, the development of musical instruments to perform and amplification systems to play outdoors. For the artistic part, Johannes Westendorp is collaborating with Zwerm (his band), an electric guitar quartet based in Belgium. They will create a set-up consisting of modular synthesizers, guitar pedals and perhaps a slide guitar as well.
In Western music practice, it is common to present music under controlled and isolated conditions which in Westendorp view is a consequence of thinking of music as an exclusively human activity. As an attempt of destabilizing this notion he and his band go to the outside, creating a non-isolated context and joining an pre-existing ecosystem accepting unpredictable influences and playing with an array of non-human beings as site-specific work (AP School of Arts n.d.).
This project is not aiming to establish any directed communication between species. Its aim is to create a setting for an audience to tune their senses and listen to a musical performance where the sounds co-exist in a choir of voices without perceiving a clear distinction between the human players or non-human “singers”. Westendorp is straightforward when saying that this is a performance mainly for other humans since it is impossible to know how other species will perceive it. Their approach is an ephemeral intervention, just performing for a short time-span and with a moderate volume trying to merge with the original soundscape they hope not to disturb the species that they would play along with (Reyes 2025).
Calling Song attempts to destabilize the notion of concert as a controlled environment. Westendorp's band go to outside, creating a non-isolated context with unpredictable influences and play with an array of non-human beings. As a remark, this project is not aiming to establish any directed communication between species. Their aim is to create a setting for an audience to activate their senses and listen to a musical performance where the sounds co-exist in a choir of voices, without clearly distinguishing human players from non-human "singers". This work requires collaboration from the audience to stay quiet in a chameleonic attitude merging with the environment during the concert.
Calling Songs is a proposal to artistically frame a temporal visit to a pre-existing sonic-ecosystem creating a space for respectful collective listening to listen-with, be-with and play-with humans and other-than-human beings.
Tree Mountain by Agnes Denes (1996-Ongoing)
Tree Mountain (1996-*) was conceived by Agnes Denes as a plan for a pine forest ecosystem restoration in the Pinzio gravel pit near Ylöjärvi, Finland. The artwork became a long term contribution to an existing ecosystem. Denes’s work primarily focuses on environmental and ecological issues, often through site-specific installations that explore land reclamation, reforestation, and human interaction with nature. Denes conceived Tree Mountain in 1982 as a collaborative, environmental project touching on global, ecological, social, and cultural issues.
The conceptualization of Tree Mountain took 14 years—from the original design concept in 1982 until its completion in 1996. The project involved building a mountain according to precise design specifications, a task that took over four years. Denes’s goal was to enable a process of bioremediation, restoring the land damaged by resource extraction through the creation of a virgin forest. The planting of 11,000 pine trees (Pinus sylvestris) helps prevent soil erosion, enhances oxygen production, and provides a habitat for wildlife. This process takes time, which is why Tree Mountain must remain undisturbed for centuries. To ensure this, Denes developed a strategy in which the planters of the trees received certificates which intended to last for 400 years. These documents are inheritable, connecting the 11,000 planters and their descendants to the project, potentially reaching millions of people, all linked by their trees. The ownership of trees can change or be transferred. However, Tree Mountain itself can never be owned or sold, nor can the trees be moved from the forest (Denes n.d). The forest structure follows a precise mathematical pattern based on the golden ratio-derived spirals found in sunflowers and pineapples (Ferro 2018). As noted in Middlebury College Article (2016) about Dene’s work:
If civilization as we know it ends or changes, there will be a reminder in the form of a strange forest for our descendants to ponder. They may reflect on an undertaking that did not serve personal needs but the common good and the highest ideals of humanity and its environment, while benefiting future generations.
Through Denes’ work, we can see her primary aim: to create an ecosystem for the future, not for exclusive human use, but for any species that might inhabit it. In this gesture, she also left a trace of human thought through the shape of the planting.
Who is the audience for Denes Tree Mountain? I would say anybody who took part, or experienced the project in any possible way -planting,walking around the forest, from the sky, etc-.
Currently, from bird’s-eye view images of the artwork, the oval mountain appears as a giant fingerprint formed by the swirling patterns of trees.
A Forest of Lines by Pierre Huyghe (2008)
A Forest of Lines was commissioned for the 16th Biennale of Sydney. For 24 hours, the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House was transformed into a virtual forest, featuring over a thousand real trees and bushes—including lilly pilly, palms, ferns, and bamboo—, mist and soft moonline illumination. The flora along with a small stream and waterfall, were temporarily installed in the Concert Hall, replacing 900 seats to create pathways. Visitors navigated this immersive environment equipped with headlamps, exploring the dense landscape. Upon entering the space, visitors find themselves positioned above the installation, looking down at a mist-covered canopy with dawn illumination. According to Huyghe, this was the most striking image of Forest of Lines (2008) since perspective imbues the work with a science-fiction-like, almost magical quality.
In contrast to romantic notions of wilderness, Pierre Huyghe’s A Forest of Lines is better understood not as a wild ecosystem but as a controlled, ephemeral garden—an artificial evocation of a forest rather than a living, unpredictable one. As Huyghe himself said “It’s not a forest that has been. It is not precisely a displacement. Still, it is an image of a forest [...]” (Douglas 2008) The installation is not a direct recreation of a natural ecosystem but rather a carefully composed image that evokes the idea of a forest.
During A Forest of Lines, visitors were invited to navigate the constructed forest, following designated paths. Equipped with headlamps provided at the entrance, their movements created flickering lights between the trees. Some audience members further engaged with the space by setting up picnics, treating the installation as a temporary park (Douglas & Huyghe, 2008). This active participation challenged conventional spatial and social protocols, granting visitors agency in shaping their own experience and positioning them as both spectators and performers within the artwork.
Several of her works have become temporal environmental realities, such as her piece Wheatfield—A Confrontation (1982), in which two acres of wheat were planted on landfill in downtown Manhattan.
Water Lilies (2012) site-specific installation by Philippe Parreno, at Beyeler Foundation. Parreno incorporated subaquatic subwoofers, which made Plexiglass circles vibrate creating rippling patterns across the water's surface.
Life by Olafur Eliassion (2021)
In 2021 the work Life from Olafur Eliasson was presented at the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen (Basel, Switzerland), transforming the museum into a living, fluid ecosystem by flooding it with water dyed an intense green. On the southern side of the gallery all windows were removed, allowing the adjacent water lily pond to extend into the building’s interior. Visitors could explore the space via wooden walkways built over the water and observe the pond from above. The artist introduced various aquatic plants, enabling them to grow within the expanded pond throughout the duration of the exhibition. The aquatic plants involved in the work* were a mixture in between original ones from the pond and new species. The green water was infused with uranine, a non-toxic dye commonly used to trace water flow, making its presence visually prominent. Different lighting effects, including white light and UV illumination at night, further enhanced the atmosphere giving the sense of stepping in an “alive” painting.
The Fondation Beyeler (Berower Park, Riehen) was established to create a space where modern and contemporary art could be appreciated alongside nature. Life project was an opportunity to open the doors and let the garden ecosystem permeate the Museum glass walls. In a podcast at Life website documentation, Sam Keller, Director of the Fondation Beyeler, and Eliasson talk about the notion of hospitality, and how they see the need to extend it to other species. In this context, hospitality is understood as the intentional opening of the space to non-human species, allowing them to inhabit, move freely and participate in the gallery environment. This notion is particularly relevant when considering the question of balance between the pre-existing ecosystem and the introduced artwork, a dynamic that will be explored in the next section.
In Life, there is a decentralization of control, giving autonomy to the artwork itself, the animals, the plants, the weather and this supposes a great contrast in relation to the rest of the exhibitions where in Keller words “we try really hard to keep the garden outside” to protect the artworks.
* Aquatic plants involved in the work:
- Water lettuce (Pistia stratiotes)
- Floating spurge (Phyllanthus fluitans)
- Floating fern (Salvinia natans)
- Water fern (Azolla filiculoides)
- Water chestnut (Trapa natans)
- Dwarf water lilies (Nymphaea tetragona, Nymphaea ‘Pygmaea Rubra’, Nymphaea ‘Ellisiana’)
- European frogbit (Hydrocharis morsus-ranae)
- Four-leaf water clover (Marsilea quadrifolia)
- Common duckweed (Lemna minor)
- South American spongeplant (Limnobium laevigatum)
