How can we get to know more-than-human worlds better? Which senses do we need and how do we train them? Or do we need additional sensors and perhaps even new (body) languages to truly connect and experience kinship?

For a long time, humans assumed that language made them unique and superior. But paradoxically, thanks in part to technology, we are discovering more and more complex communication systems between non-human animals, plants and the earth. It is high time we learn to listen to these as well, instead of just listening to each other, when that is already proving so difficult.

Sensing Otherness: Navigating the more-than-human world zooms in on how artists and designers, working closely with scientists, explore these complex conversations between a wide variety of living species and ecosystems. Remarkably, ancient mythological knowledge and advanced sensors and artificial intelligences seem to reinforce each other. We are now especially acoustically witnessing life happening in the remotest corners of the earth and the deepest depths of the oceans and we want to give this life recognition and meaning. At the same time, it makes us increasingly aware of the far-reaching, often poisonous and destructive influences, we human animals have on soil, air and water.

Participating artists
affect lab Waiting for Cows
Carla Alcalà Badias & Laura Villanueva  Microbial Prophetesses
Disnovation.org The Solar Share & Eating the Sun
Emilia Tapprest & Samar Khan Ecotonal Beings
Herwig Ilegems Head to Head
Jan van IJken Planktonium
Marit Shalem Milk
Saša Spačal Terra Xenobiotica
Xandra van der Eijk Mother of Pearl
Zuika Owada The Eyes Tell You The Truth

Mother of Pearl in Sensing Otherness was on show at MU from December 13, 2024, to March 16, 2025.