Emilia Tapprest & Samar Khan

Ecotonal Beings

In collaboration with Meertens Institute, Victor Evink & Sophie Mars

​How might emerging computational capabilities impact how humans live alongside other animals? Ecotonal Beings envisions scenarios where smart interfaces help humans attune to various scales of more-than-human life: A teenage girl follows eels’ migration with an underwater drone; a young falconer mediates relationships between humans and hawk communities through a close personal relationship; a marine biologist engages with sea butterflies as bio-indicators of oceanic “emotions”; and a social misfit receives instructions from cows that act as the stewards of an island.

These four characters struggle to interpret the meanings conveyed by other species, by machine cognitions, and even by other humans – and yet, at least they try. Anthropologist Anna Tsing argues that every living being has the ability or ‘agility’ to tune into other species through training, intimacy, experience and prosthetics. In the film, these prosthetics can be technological, but also spiritual, ranging from bioacoustic AI to animistic gestures. What if a version of these technologies and practices were propagated in society at large? With this prospect – whether close or far, – the installation is structured around three questions that the team asks themselves: “How can we ask for permission?”, “What do we mean with translation?”, and “What is the significance of the lived body when much of the communication is mediated by machines”?

In ecology, the word ‘ecotone’ designates transitional zones between different biotic communities. The origin of the word is in the Greek roots “oikos” (home) and “tonus” (tension). The project refers to “ecotonal beings” as humans and other animals alike who take the risk of engaging with this tension, searching for a heightened sense of belonging among others.