Much of my childhood‘s narrative is embedded in interactions between me and the more-than-human world. From an early age, I understood, without the need for reflection, that storytelling is not the sole domain of human authorship.
A story can be told by the moon, the wind, a tiny spider, or the stars themselves. These stories are rarely written or spoken in human language; instead, they emerge in a spectrum of expressions of movements, rhythms, changes in light and texture, the subtle interweaving of forces.
As a child, I did not question this porosity of storytelling, this entanglement of narrative agency and meaning-making: it was simply a given. But now, decades later, I ask: If stories arise through a multiplicity of voices, what does this mean for narrative itself? How does a story take shape when agency is not singular but shared? And how might artistic research create the conditions for narratives to emerge rather than be imposed? These questions form the foundation of my research, leading to the central question of this investigation: How does narrative agency emerge collaboratively between human, technological, and more-than-human agents in my practice? This question arises from a desire to move beyond humancentered notions of storytelling, seeking methodologies that recognise the agency of more-than-human entities. I aim to shift from modes of representation toward a more reciprocal exchange of meaning. From a mode where the environment is observed, translated, or appropriated to one where the world does not simply exist to be described but is given space to speak, and to be listened to.
A crucial aspect of this inquiry is investigating what methodologies can facilitate co-creation across human, technological, and more-than-human agents. If storytelling is inherently relational, artistic research must develop approaches that account for these relations in practice. This research examines the role of transduction in revealing more-than-human narratives, exploring how sensory data can be translated across modalities to make these narratives perceptible. Another key consideration is how different environments—natural, urban, computational—shape the ways narrative agency is distributed. Technology plays a mediating role in these interactions, forming and influencing relationships between agents while adding its own narratives to the stories. Additionally, this research explores artistic strategies that unsettle anthropocentric control over narrative-making. If an artistic researcher can act as a conduit rather than a sole author of meaning, it raises questions about how methodologies such as intra-action, material ecocriticism, and actor-network theory can offer alternative approaches to storytelling.
These questions are explored through artistic practice. The experiments undertaken are structured as site-specific collaborations, each engaging with a distinct environment to examine how narrative agency emerges in different conditions. Through these collaborations, I aim to investigate how meaning is generated not in isolation but through entangled, relational networks.
This inquiry is about seeking new ways of listening, perceiving, and responding; about attuning to the stories that already exist, waiting to be heard. It is an attempt to develop an artistic practice that does not impose meaning but invites it to emerge.