A Decade of Wonder: Sounds for living

We learned to listen to the organic and inanimate objects that surround us, seeking new pathways to connect to our environment. If we could hear something in a different way, perhaps we could learn a different way to live with and learn from it—whether that might be a bustling market in the middle of Bangkok, young saplings in The Ancestral Forest or a lion’s mane mushroom.

In our collaborations with MSCTY_Studio, we explored ways to experience the world through sound and space, investigating the overlap of tangible and sonic landscapes. In 2019, the Erased Tapes label and MSCTY_Studio brought interpretations of Bangkok’s urban environment to The Fields.

This project invited artists to form a conversation with locations in Thailand’s capital city that are nuclei of history, energy and emotion, to approach with openness and form their own interpretations of the space. MSCTY_Studio’s Nick Luscombe and Erased Tapes founder Robert Raths selected artists from around the world, allocating each artist to visit a landmark around the city curated by us, including Hua Lampong Central Station, Museum Siam and Wat Arun.

In the week leading up to Wonderfruit 2019, collaborating artists Hatis Noit, Douglas Dare, Midori Hirano, Rival Consoles, Daniel Brandt, Supergoods and Nannue Tipitier collected recordings, listened to the sounds of the space and wrote poetry inspired by the emotional connections made there, transforming them into music. Each piece premiered live in The Fields.

When things slowed down in 2020, listening to the simple and universal sonic qualities of the world helped make sense of it and keep us all connected. During Mooban Wonder, Wonderfruit and MSCTY_Studio launched a new project, Sonic Elements, which explored the elements of earth, water, metal, air and wood.

Artists came together to create soundscapes that explored each element’s characteristics, which then inspired thematic art and architecture in The Fields. These built structures invited Wonderers to enter and interact with the physical and aural aspects. ‘Earth’ by Hear & Found played in the curved shelter of Embrace, a rammed earth pavilion by Nanu Youttananukorn. The soundscape piece is a compilation of recorded sounds from indigenous communities and their natural environments around Thailand, representing the life that is intrinsically connected to the earth.

‘Metal’ by Kate Carr resonated from the central dome structure of ‘Sonic Path’, a metal maze created by Pin Metal Art’s Saruta Kiatparkpoom. The soundscape was centered in the vibrations recorded from Kate’s bicycle trips, morphing into the sounds of metallic structures like pipes and water towers.

Floating gently in a pond, ‘Rueng Loy’ by Eyedropper Fill invited people to lie down and listen to a four-channel hydrophone array by Chris Watson. Immersing Wonderers in the element of ‘Water’, ‘Voices in the Humboldt Current’ blended the natural music of whalesong and coral reef chatter in the Pacific Ocean around the Galapagos Islands.

For the exploration of ‘Air’, MSCTY_Studio invited amateur and professional field recordists from around the world to submit their own recordings and the effects of air on the environment. The sound work they created was featured in an interactive art piece, ‘Aeropendulum’ by Archicomplex, in which three pendulums moved when the wind pushed leaflike panels at the top. In 2022, the air installation returned to The Fields as ‘Feather’, a soundscape shelter overlooking the lake.

The element of ‘Wood’ was explored in the then-newly planted Ancestral Forest through ‘Mori no Oto’ by Nick Luscombe and James Greer, combined from trinkets of sound collected from the original Miyawaki Forest in the campus of Yokohoma National University. The long-form soundscape echoing through the very young trees we planted with SUGi, experts in the Miyawaki method of forest growing and local forest maker Baan Suan Onsorn.

As the Ancestral Forest grew around us, we explored more ways to connect to nature through sound. The seeds sown in Sonic Elements sprouted into a new collaborative project: Sonic Minds. From this new collaboration bloomed an inaugural sound camp held in The Fields.

Our intention was to begin a dialogue that overlapped science, art, music, sound engineering and mindfulness practices, exploring how hearing sounds from nature could impact our spiritual, physical and mental well-being.

At the sound camp, people from different backgrounds and practices came together to listen to the forest and the land around it. We collected audio samples, listening to the sounds made between the trunks of the still-young trees, in the tall grass, by the lakes and in the low shrubbery. These recordings became part of compositions that echoed through the Ancestral Forest.

In 2023, ‘DECLARE THE FOREST’ projected spoken-word recordings of forest visionary Akira Miyawaki at the forest’s entrance, read aloud by people who joined the sound camp and collaborators allied in nature conservation.

‘A Declaration of Plants’ combined original creations from Terry Riley and Sara Miyamoto with processed field recordings that narrated a day in the life of the forest’s flora. The piece was brought back in 2024, reimagined through Sonic Mind’s theme of Equanimity and evolved with sounds captured within the growing forest.

In 2019, ADRUNNOGNT—a collaboration between Arnont Nongyao and Nguyen Ngoc Tu Dung— introduced ‘Amnesia Mole’, a sound installation in an open field within sight of the towering Yang Na tree. 16 horn speakers and 16 amplifiers played a symphonic creation of the lakes, the trees, the ground, the sky and the structures in The Fields—and all the creatures that can be found within. All the sounds collected from our site during the rainy season, when the land is most vibrant with song.

Each year following, different imaginings returned, compiling familiar and strange vibrations into a new language. Field recordings extended beyond the festival site into the mountains behind, rich with native ecosystems. In 2024, ‘Awaken Amnesia Mole’, the installation’s fourth evolution, blended field recordings with Ken Ueno’s improvised voices in an interplay of sound, nature and time.

“On top of the ground, we’re bathed in chemical and acoustic information, sounds and pheromones. Underneath the ground, our roots run deep, connected to the soil and tangled with mycelium, surging with electricity.”
– Modern Biology

In 2023, Indonesian duo Bottlesmoker used electrodes to connect to plants and translate bio-data into sonic keys. They returned to The Fields in 2024, this time collaborating with Modern Biology and plugging into giant mushrooms provided by Earthling Mushroom Farm, transforming natural bio-data into music.

In 2024, Modern Biology invited us to participate in a live musical dialogue with fungi and plants, including saplings we planted in the Ancestral Forest following the performance. Melodies were interpreted from bio-electrical signals, embodying the exchange of chemical and acoustic information that happens quietly all around us.