When working with natural elements and generating Artistic Ecosystems, there is always a question of balance in play: Does the work dominate the pre-existing natural ecosystem? Does it step into it? Does it invade it completely? Moreover, when working with non-humans, ethical concerns arise from the start: How are the non-humans beings involved treated? Is this process benefiting or harming the non-human community in any way?
The “force field creator” of the Artistic Ecosystem is the artist. I believe the underlying reasons behind artworks influence the process from beginning to end. An artist’s morality, ethics, priorities, life choices, and orientation are continuously translated into their work. These pieces relate to the ecosystems where they take place through the artist’s conscious and unconscious intentions—the Mental Ecology of the Artist (Guattari 1989). In this section I reflect on the relationship of each project to these questions.
Joining a Sonic Ecosystem: Calling Songs
In the Calling Songs project, the immediate questions of balance are directed toward the performers’ presence and influence on the pre-existing sonic environment—that is, the natural ecosystem of the places where the performances would take place. Regarding sound pollution, Westendorp mentioned the following in the interview:
I think we all know that high levels of sound will have a negative impact on animals in general. But it depends very much on the species what the effect exactly is, depending on level, which spectrum of sound, etc. And in all the research and articles that I've read, they, of course, study things like the effect of offshore drilling and aeroplane traffic… All these sorts of things. You will never find the effect of four guitarists sitting outside with eight speakers. I mean, that is just impossible. If I would want to know what the effect of our presence is, I would actually have to start the whole research myself and I'm not equipped for this.
From early stages of the project, Westendorp sought guidance from biologist Baudewijn Odé to gain insights about the species they might encounter in the performative settings. He is also planning to consult Hans Slabbekoorn, Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Behaviour at Leiden University. Through these contacts and other sources, the artist will investigate which frequency ranges would be appropriate to play along with local species, particularly amphibians and insects. Following Slabbekoorn’s advice, the performers plan to avoid spectral overlap with the species on site. For example, Natterjack toads communicate most actively around 1500 Hz, so musicians should avoid using this frequency range in their performances to prevent interfering with the toads' communication and avoid causing confusion or disturbance to the species.
As he mentioned, their sonic interventions are ephemeral and always adapted to a different context. As Johannes frames it, they will “participate in an ongoing concert that has no beginning and no end—an ongoing concert that might actually have been happening for more than 300 million years,” when the first amphibians began to develop on Earth.
I encourage the reader to read this section while listening to the Calling Songs performance in the background. If it bothers you, you can turn down the volume on your computer and turn it up when you want to listen to it.
In a previous sonic experiment, Westendorp attempted to play natterjack toad calls at a site where some were present—but there was no reply. The toads seemed to know it wasn’t one of them, and didn’t react positively. In any case, he admits that the idea of performing other species’ calls was quickly discarded from this project. Instead, he chose to focus on finding complementary sounds, rather than imitating existing ones (Reyes, 2025).
Their aim is to propose sonic encounters between human and other beings while shifting our perception away from exclusively human cultural frameworks. But then the question arises: Should the sonic impact of guitarists playing at moderate volume for an hour near a pond be scrutinized? Should artists (and artistic researchers) be expected to be completely coherent in their practices? ◘ Artists—and in fact, most people—are often trapped in the contradictions of the very systems we participate in. It’s not always easy, or even possible, to maintain total coherence between praxis, intention, and argumentation. But we need to accept that we live within a complex system—one that almost always brings some degree of contradiction.
Is there a big difference between singing a song by a river and playing a few electric guitar pedals by a pond? or a modular synth by a lake? Does the presence of technology make us judge one more harshly than the other? Should humans simply make their music indoors to avoid the risk of disturbing other species? And how do we even know if it does disturb them? Didn’t humans do this since the beginning of their existence as well?
Life, let the pond come into the exclusively Cultural Ecosystem through an Artistic Ecosystemic field of action. The project invited a playful performativity from the visitors, as can be seen in the way the public related to the flooded space of the museum. Photos capture people standing in the shallow water, carefully navigating the surreal environment, and videos show dogs wandering through the exhibition, further emphasizing the organic and unstructured nature of the experience.
Letting in more-than-humans in a gallery: Life
In the case of Eliasson’s Life, the gallery space changes enough to host the pond ecosystem with a high degree of autonomy. The intention of “letting in” other-than-human beings was what characterized the exhibition the most. The garden where the gallery is placed is part of a cultural ecosystem as well, since it is “nature” shaped into a more controlled version of itself for human enjoyment. The artists, workers, and curators indeed thought of and with the ecosystem in which the gallery is placed. The project intervenes in the gallery’s “exclusively-human” space, with nature as a backdrop, opening it up. I would say that the intentions of the work are clear—especially after reading all the materials on the Life (2021) documentation website. The literature that accompanies the work features fragments from Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, excerpts from I Walked into the Future and Was Welcomed: Olafur Eliasson and Timothy Morton in Conversation (2020), Natasha Myers’ thoughts from How to Grow Livable Worlds: Ten Not-So-Easy Steps (2018), statements from Culture Hack Labs Reports, and excerpts from Anna Wirz-Justice’s (neurobiologist) texts about circadian rhythms in different species—all of them contributing to the deconstruction of human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism.
“Instead of dominating nature and doing violence to it, we have the opportunity to align ourselves with it and become a force for nature and with it.”
— Culture Hack Labs, 2020
Orchestrating an Ecosystem on Stage: A Forest of Lines
Regarding Huyghe’s work A Forest of Lines, this Artistic Ecosystem needs a higher degree of human-induced stability. One could see that the balance between the Opera’s pre-existing cultural ecosystem and the visiting forest still leans toward the former. The Opera stage didn’t change enough for the forest to take over and live on its own for long.
Where did these trees come from, and where will they go after the installation?
The 16th Biennale of Sydney Report (2008) mentions that the production was assisted by the company Rent-A-Garden (Terrey Hills). It’s therefore likely that the trees and bushes were rented for a limited period and later returned to the company. In this process of forest simulation, the non-human actants—meaning the rainforest flora from the Artistic Ecosystem network—were entirely dependent on human intervention underscoring a “controlled” nature of the spectacle and taken care of for the purpose of the show.
In a conversation with Douglas (2008), Huyghe explains that he visited the Daintree Rainforest—one of the oldest rainforests on Earth—accompanied by someone named Prudence. As they walked, she recounted stories that inspired Huyghes to choose this forest as an inspiration for the project*.
As documented in the previously shown video (Adam Sébire 2008), the soundtrack for A Forest of Lines was composed (and partially performed) by UK singer-songwriter Laura Marling. Huyghe explains that the song’s lyrics served as navigational instructions, guiding listeners out of the Opera House and beyond: “Turn your back on the forest of lines, leave the Opera House behind, then pass the bridge, past Luna Park [...]” and so on (Douglas 2008). The song acted as a map, leading back to the source of the translated environment: the Daintree Rainforest. His inspiration for this concept came while visiting Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, where he learned about the Anangu people’s oral traditions—songs that transmit environmental knowledge and serve as tools for orientation (Douglas, 2008). Both the Daintree Rainforest stories and the map-song tradition are examples of how, in Indigenous Australian communities, the inseparability of Nature and Culture takes place. A Forest of Lines serves as a bridge between the exclusive human cultural ecosystem of the Opera and the Daintree Forest. However the Daintree is now an endangered ecological community. The effects of the Great Acceleration and climate change intensify, the old Nature/Culture divide grows increasingly problematic—especially in policy, planning, and law, where it influences what’s protected, what’s exploited, and what’s left vulnerable. The paradox is, that even with legal “protections” in place, nothing is immune to the unfolding impacts of our actions.
*In theory Prudence told Huyghe stories of Captain Cook’s diaries from his arrival on the northern coast of Australia. Upon entering the Daintree, Cook encountered Strangler trees — Different kinds of Ficus (family Moraceae) species that encircle and eventually kill other trees, leaving a hollow core. Apparently, Cook and his crew saw human remains inside these trees. Cook, according to her story, misinterpreted the scene, believing the trees themselves consumed people. But the thing is, there’s no mention of strangler trees or tree burials in the chapter of Captain Cook's journal that details his exploration of Australia’s east coast. This suggests that either Prudence fabricated the account—or that Huyghe misunderstood her.
The Daintree Lowland Rainforest is currently an endangered ecological community—home to 142 rare or threatened plant species and 44 endangered animal species.
Ecosystemic Intervention: Tree Mountain
Agnes Denes’s Tree Mountain project is the one with the longest lifespan and impact on the ecosystem in which it takes place. The Artistic Ecosystem managed to attract the necessary forces and permissions to carry out an ecological restoration of the open air mine ruins, assuring its long-term protection through legal contracts, as explained in previous sections. Denes strongly believes in the power of art—and of artists—to offer solutions to the problems humanity faces today. In an interview conducted by Emma McCormick-Goodhart, published under the title If the Earth Were a Hot Dog (2019), they discuss the importance of designing new environments and ecosystems in our current moment. Over the course of her life, Denes has imagined environments for outer space, terrestrial landscapes, coastlines, and the deep sea of which have been realized, while others exist only as conceptual designs or parts of her “visual philosophy language.” Toward the end of the interview, McCormick-Goodhart asks: “What do you envision as future spaces of practice and exhibition for artists of the future, who have yet to be born? Should we not be practicing indoors?” Denes responds:
◘ It depends on what they want to do. I see a lot of art today that, to me, is meaningless. Artists try a little bit of environmental art, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I don’t see anything beyond the struggle to be seen and heard. It’s good to have so many artists; I wish we had more. But most artists don’t spend enough time on their art. If your art is well thought-out, it demands its own presentation, it demands its own space. Art has to be strong enough to make room for itself. It has to be strong enough to withstand the public’s lack of understanding.
How do these works try to make room for themselves? I would argue that they aim to transform contexts—to do things differently, to destabilize conventional understandings of what an exhibition is, as in the case of Life, or what a concert is, as in A Forest of Lines and Calling Songs. They seem to seek a sense of wonder, one that would shift the human experience in relation to other beings. As quoted in Eliane Beaufils’s Life Re-scaled (2022) chapter “Staging Larger Scales and Deep Entanglements,” Martyn Evans defines wonder as a special kind of transfiguring encounter between us and something other than us.
The attitude of wonder is thus one of altered, compellingly-intensified attention to something that we immediately acknowledge as somehow important—something that might be unexpected, that in its fullest sense we certainly do not yet understand, and towards which we will likely want to turn our faculty of understanding; something whose initial appearance to us engages our imagination before our understanding; something at that moment larger and more significant than ourselves; something in the face of which we momentarily set aside our own concerns (and even our self-conscious awareness, in the most powerful instances) —Martyn Evans, "Wonder and the Clinical Encounter," Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 33, no. 2 (February 2012): 4.
◘ All of these works revolve around unexpected encounters that aim to be transfiguring. The projects stage situations that would not typically coexist within that specific relational framework. I believe that ecological performances, in particular, require the presence of unexpected encounters, collaborations, and combinations—where humans interpret signs and experience communication not solely through rational means, but through other sensory processes.
Excerpt from "A short history of The Pyramids" - Denes
The Restless Pyramids create Self-Supporting City Dwellings that can sustain their inhabitants, and Space Stations and other pyramids of the future for space travel with flexible, self-regenerating and easy to repair units. This is the birth of giant Fish Pyramids for creating underwater habitats, or pyramids in the shape of an egg or a teardrop. They are created for a different world in which the inhabitants will live in space, hovering above Earth, or else live on Earth in self-contained, self-supporting environments. These structures are not science fiction, they are the product of high technology, yet another "perfection", that of the flexibility of natural systems. They have a look of freshness and vulnerability. They are the future and the future is always vulnerable and unused.
© Agnes Denes 2005 - Agnes Denes Studio Website
