MULTISENSORY
Chemical Calls of Care
A (science fiction?) machine for wired audio-chemical telecommunication.
«Life on Earth, from its very beginning, depended on chemical communication: the signaling among single cells. From bacteria to humans, chemical signals are the basis of life’s most fundamental transactions.» — Lynn Margulis
Chemical Calls of Care (2024) is an interactive installation that presents a system to try toestablish audio-olfactory communication with the nonhuman, in this case with some plants andelements from the Goeffert park in Nijmejen (NL).
Attempting to generate horizontal relations with the biosphere based on respect, the project explores the difficulty of getting in contact with other entities using chemical communication, a nonverbal language that we do not articulate fluently, and acts as a proposal to start practicing it.
In order to relate and interconnect with other species, it is helpful to understand each other’s method of expression. For that, Chemical Calls of Care will present an arrangement of flexible tubes and fans that will bring chemical information from the park into the installation space. Using the same method in reverse will allow the public to send olfactory messages to the outside, therefore performing chemical calls. Those messages will comprise extracts from plats that provide nutrients to promote natural processes that enhance the health and balance of ecosystems. This aims to cuddle the receiver vegetation and soil with only restorative messages of care.
In addition, gas sensors will provide data from the composition of the air that will be translated into sound, a lexicon that might be easier to understand by various unalike species.
>> Watch here (esp subtitles)