Chapter 3: "Librettising" ecology to create Lipote: An Interconnected Journey
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Context of the Research and Influences
3.3 Synopsis
3.4 Developing the Script
3.4.a Communication: Influence from the Science
3.4.b Exploring Different Worlds: Panarchy and Adaptive
3.4.c Soil
3.4.d The Fungal Network
3.4.e The Narrator
3.4.f The Humans
3.4.g The Rainforest
i. A Framework for the Rainforest
iii. Exploring the Rainforest through Cycles of Collaboration
3.4.h The Palm Tree Plantation
3.4.i Lipote as the Loner Tree and the "Fiery Edge"
3.4.j The Strangler Fig
3.4.k The Forest Garden (or Taungya) and the Marriage
3.6 Future Steps and Conclusion
3.4.d The Fungal Network
After the discussions with Prof. Newton and Dr Eichhorn I decided to focus more attention on representing the mycorrhizae (fungal network) alongside the trees. This happened through two routes. Firstly, I made sure that the fungal network is mentioned alongside any mentions of communication. For example, at the end of scene 1 when the Rainforest is singing its message of help it says: 'A decomposing irreparable fungal network / Mother node down.’ (p. 4, lines 94-95). The palm trees do not make any reference to fungal networks in scene 2 as they do not have and extensive amount of this form of communication with each other. In scene 4 the Lipote mentions the network just before they attempt to communicate with the Palm Trees: ‘I do not travel alone / My fungal friends travel upwards / Take my message to the fields of noise’ (pg. 11, lines 233-240). In scene 5 the Lipote references the decayed and useless networks of the lost rainforest: ‘There were friends here / not dug away. / Their networks rotten, / Their threads decayed.’ (pg. 15, lines 335-338). In scene 6 the King Durian declares ‘Let our fungal networks fuse / Build a highway from your land to ours’ (p. 19, lines 471-472) before they are able to share resources and information.
Secondly, Oliver and I decided to make an addition to the score of a ‘network audio’ which would represent the activity of the fungal network. Whilst on residency at Nature, Art and Habitat, I began a project of recording the soil, transcribing and then composing from the recordings. Although this material did not make it to the final work it did inform our decision to include within the soundtrack the addition of the “network audio”, an ongoing responsive sound that would represent the fungal network and surrounding soil ecosystem. This sound appears most notably in the narrations (go to timecode 00:19:15 - scene 3), but is also present in the moments when there is communication occurring between the Lipote, the Rainforest and the surrounding systems. Initially we had used elements from the soil recordings, but later Oliver decided to replace these with sounds created from the audio of the music by designing midi patches (a network of transmitters and transformers) to generate random variations on the music in the Logic Environment. Despite the final product being far from the original work, these initial recordings of soil were very influential in creating this other sound world, guiding us in the type of noises and ambient sounds that are present in soil itself.