It is clear that Interspecies work is complex, multi-faceted, and requires interdisciplinary collaboration with both the human and nonhuman world. This episode speculates on pathways forward, reflecting on technologies, resources, the problems we face and how we may work through them to productively take Interspecies work forward. Topics range from systems thinking and systems change, to small-scale token economics. We hear from Ted Schmitt, Director, Conservation at the Allen Institute of AI, and Andrea Leiter, Director of Research at the Sovereign Nature Initiative.

Produced by Bridey Addison-Child. A Reduced Listening production for LAS.

In this episode we hear highlights from the Interspecies Future Symposium which took place at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin in July 2022. The event set out to mark the beginning of a multi-decade civilisational journey to define the Interspecies discipline and set pathways to bend the evolution of AI towards nature. Throughout four panel discussions we heard about the importance of empathy for non-humans, open access data, new modelling in AI, kinship with the nonhuman world, how we navigate rights for the nonhuman world, and more.

Produced by Bridey Addison-Child. A Reduced Listening production for LAS.

In this second exploration of the Interspecies via creative practice, we hear from science-fiction author Stanley Qiufan Chen and artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen, in conversation. They discuss a need for new forms of communication across species, and relate this concept to how they communicate in their own practices in multidisciplinary ways. Chen and Steensen discuss AI and how it has influenced our relation to other intelligences. They also explore narrative and alternatives to this linear logic through new rhythms – both literal and metaphorical – and the importance of intersubjectivity. By animating other worlds through mythology, science, technology, space, and sound, we come closer to a collective awakening of an Interspecies Future.

This episode features an extract from Re-Animated, an artwork by Jakob Kudsk Steenson. It features the voice of the Ornithologist, Douglas H. Pratt. The call of the Kaua’iʻōʻō bird is used with permission from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

Produced by Bridey Addison-Child. A Reduced Listening production for LAS.