In the epoch of the Anthropocene and an era of looming climate catastrophe, artworks that engage with the natural world are commonplace. The desire to invoke the organic transcends disciplines, manifesting in post-apocalyptic narratives, sculptures constructed with found leaves, and playful, endlessly entertaining compilations pairing animals with synthetic beats. Drawing from nature isn’t new, and yet, it’s become an increasingly prevalent and poignant endeavor for many artists working today.

There’s also, though, been a change in the approach to such projects, in which more intimate and constitutive modes of production have supplanted simple inspiration. Where painting a bucolic landscape or translating walks into symphonic masterpieces once reigned, today’s culture tends to ask for works that are more timely, more invested in revealing the interconnected relationship between humanity and nature.

This predilection is apparent for a multitude of artists who don’t stop at inspiration and instead, go one step further to use nature, its phenomena, and vast array of systems to provide a shape or apparatus around which they create. Sometimes, this structuring is metaphorical, as is the case with the slew of pieces that utilize the metamorphic properties of the fermentation process to transform harm into more equitable, generative modes of existence. It also happens physically. Multidisciplinary artist Du Kun, for example, creates sound waves on an acoustic guitar or percussive instrument and then transforms those undulating lines into traditional Chinese landscapes replete with steep mountains and whimsically wispy clouds. In both approaches, the resulting pieces would be unrecognizable and fundamentally different in both aesthetic and affect if the organic matter were to be extracted. The artworks branch off of the natural.

Biomusic, the genre that incorporates sounds created in a biological manner, functions similarly. In her 1982 hit “O Superman,” performance artist and composer Laurie Anderson overlays her echoing, conversation-heavy lyrics with a recording of birds tweeting, collaging human and avian communication into a cohesive chorus. Ned Lagin’s 1975 album Sea Stones is another iconic approach to this style. The M.I.T molecular biologist and Grateful Dead member billed the experimental compilation as "cybernetic biomusic.” Made with computers and synthesizers, the otherworldly album offers what Jesse Jarnow of Pitchfork describes as “synaesthetic vistas...cybernetic pebbles skipping across a digital pond and over the event horizon (“Track 79”)... cackling insect reveries (“Track 80”)... the rush of the ocean in a seashell (“Track 54”). The natural world is an integral part of these works, helping to define their sound and artistic principles.

Both inspirational and structural approaches rely on human intervention and translation—chirping birds would likely not have topped record charts if it weren’t for Anderson’s deft hand—and it’s the combination of the human and non-human that makes the works palatable and relevant. Perhaps the most innovative and holistic method for conveying the ways we interact with other beings, though, is to move toward true interspecies collaboration. For visual disciplines, this type of teamwork might materialize as these mixed-media embroideries that bees complete by encasing the central stitches in honeycomb, for example, but in music, we find it in the artists at the forefront of bio-sonification.

A branch of sonification, or the practice of representing information through non-speech audio, bio-sonification “basically means using technology to turn the bio-rhythms of living organisms into sound,” says educator and art engineer Sam Cusumano, who helms Electricity for Progress. The idea is to transcribe real-time data garnered from a specimen into pitches, volume, and other auditory components, transforming its otherwise imperceptible inner-workings into a sensory experience available to humans—think of this technique as a Geiger counter but for biological beings. “While the raw presentation of data from the plants may not necessarily sound like ‘music,’ the biodata can be partnered with the sounds of specific instruments and filtered to play in specific keys and note ranges chosen by a composer,” Cusumano writes. Even when paired with more humanistic sound, as he describes, the integrity of the plant-generated audio remains intact, which is an important component of the collaborative process.

MycoLyco, a YouTuber and musician, demonstrates this technique in a spate of videos that show him hooking small sensors to king oyster mushrooms, rattle snake plants, and apples. After he attaches the nodes, a chaotic blend of electronic noises rings through his speakers. The sounds are distinctly synthetic in comparison to their organic sources, and they create an audible snapshot of the organism’s biological processes within a certain timeframe: each sensor runs a current through the physical matter and recognizes changes in resistance, which are then converted to “musically useful control signals,” MycoLyco writes. “With the use of a modular synthesizer, I can route these signals to control when the note plays, how long it is, the pitch, its timbre, and some parameter of effects as well.” Although he utilizes an elaborate setup and full-scale modular synthesizer, new technology makes it possible to produce the same effects with a simple, transportable device.

Theoretically, attaching the sensors to any lifeform would generate a unique audio set and would offer seemingly endless opportunities to discern the subtle variances between an orchid and a pothos or, reishi and a button mushroom. Bio-sonification is also relatively novel in the long trajectory of art and music, and it’s incredibly entertaining as many of us listen to the sounds of houseplants and edible organisms for the first time. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of this practice, though, is that it is truly collaborative and positions all beings as creative producers; it upends our notions of biological constraints and rankings. In MycoLyco’s world, fungi quickly morph from their long-held designation as decomposers into an oppositional role that’s generative. Fungi, in short, become composers.

Listen to MycoLyco’s A Mushroom Music Dance Party album, and you’ll observe this creative output at work. The spacey compilation features heavy beats and sweeping, unearthly soundscapes created through remixed noises recorded from cordyceps and a few other oyster varieties. Equally immersive is Cusumano’s 2020 installation titled “The Wildflower Botanical Orchestra,” which involved the collection at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and tracking its shifting dispositions across 35 days spanning the winter solstice. “As multiple plants are connected to these ‘Nodes,’ a larger musical piece will begin to unravel, telling the story of each plant’s day in the garden, providing guests with a variety of plants and instrumentations to focus on,” he says. Whether fungi or foliage or album or artwork, both projects amplify phenomena otherwise inaudible to the human ear, granting MycoLyco and Cusumano the ability to create works that are as beautiful and intriguing for their artistic qualities as they are for the biological information they convey.

Notably different from the pseudoscience that fed the esoteric and now widely coveted Mother Earth's Plantasia, today’s understandings of the link between nature and sound are far more grounded in rigorous research and genuine data. Studies prove that humans aren’t the only species with a musical predisposition, and although it’s unhelpful to anthropomorphize organisms to the point of assuming all can hear as we do or cultivate their artistic practice, we know that music isn’t divorced from the natural world: melodies stimulate seed growth and  plants use audible information to locate water and to communicate with each other.

Bio-sonification is a reminder that life is diverse, that consciousness is not what defines existence, and that our biological hierarchies are misguided. Given impending climate disasters and our increased attention toward what the earth is bound to lose as those unfold, it’s likely that our interest in collaborating across species will expand. Musicians will also continue to play an integral role in asking listeners to really hear and find a deeper appreciation for the vast, under-explored capabilities of species we’ve often regarded as only useful for their nourishment or ecological function. As we foster new approaches to music and to art, we can be reminded that there’s so much more creative potential, intrigue, and joy to be found when we hand over the mic.