Field Works is a research and development project for 2026 towards outdoor co-creative performances, activities and events that bring together human and more-than-human actants. Our work invites a deep listening to and a dialogue with the natural world through practices encompassing somatics and biosensing. We integrate the natural world into our finished works through digital recordings and wherever possible live more-than-human beings (plants, trees, fungi, soil, water) present in the space. We have a strong desire to work outdoors and bring these real-time interractions into creative works to invite a sense of wonder and deep connection with the natural world. That works well with physical performance and materials, but is a challenge working in an interdisciplinary way incorporating digital technology. Field works will see us research, test and prototype an immersive outdoor experience that can pop up to enable an intimate performance with natural ecosystems.

We are dreaming of a very special encounter in the wild. A humanoid figure a-top a large domed structure perambulates through a woodland, powered by the human hidden within. People follow drawn by the strange floating being which stops in a clearing near a tree. What was a sort of dome or skirt, gently unfolds upwards to form a canopy and revealing musical apparatus underneath – biosensors, geophones, hydrophones, sensitive microphones, amid speakers and instruments, some recognisable some peculiar. The canopy demarcates a patch of ground which will be the site for a completely unique performance – powered by human and more-than-human actants. Part field site, part laboratory, part forest school, part artwork – we invite people to suspend their disbelief and experience this patch of ground through collective listening, sound making, vibration, sensation and wonder.

We want to create spaces for re-connection to the natural world through deep listening. We know from workshops and performances where we use biosensors and specialised microphones to ‘listen’ to nature that people feel a deep sense of empathy, wonder and resonance: be that through music created through the electrical signals in a fungi or tree; hearing their own footsteps vibrate under the ground through soil; hearing the sound of rain in a puddle through a hydrophone. We are imagining a roving biodome of sorts, a sort of mobile encampment where each time people gather a unique musical performance is created by the living things under its canopy. An invitation to interact with the wood wide web of forest interconnections using the senses (and special super sensing equipment) to amplify and make visible the complex interactions under a single footstep in a woodland or forest.

We have delivered many outdoor workshops and super sensing activities, and done many performances ourselves in collaboration with the natural environment in caves, forests and fields. We are now interested in framing these experiences as an encounter within a liminal space – and in entering a strange portal ask people to suspend any disbelief and re-enter a state of wonder, listening and making music in collaboration with the natural world.

We have made installations and costumes and unusual wearables for performances. We know how to power equipment from simple batteries and work safely outdoors. We know how to curate the invitation to make sound with sensors working with the natural world. We have been exploring origami folding structures. But we havent yet been able to prototype bringing this together into a beautifully framed performance piece and trouble shoot all the practicals and aesthetics that go with that. We want to play with ideas of inside and outside and find low tech ways to amplify the sounds created under the canopy as an ambient audio experience on the outside. That is what we would like the time to prototype and R&D through Field Works.

Clare Parker - somatics, movement, costume design and participatory engagement.

Emilio Mula - sensing the environment using biosensors and high sensitivity microphones, integrating captured material and scientific data & generative art.

Ric Byer - music and sound composition blending sampled and found sound, ableton and live stick / percussion.

Willa Faulkner - somatics and live movement performance.