This is the indoor adaptation of the exercise “the concentric rings of perception” when we don’t have the conditions to go in a park or a forest. You will bring nature inside your room by creating a spatialized sonic composition with the sounds of wild animals, the wind, the river and the ocean. To do so, we will use a sound library we prepared for you and will invite each participant to play the sound of their choice on their mobile phone. Every participant will choose a location in the room to lay the phone on the floor and play the sound in harmony with the other participants' sounds. This exercise will bring us to an enchanted forest energized by our memories.

Step 1:  Let’s form a circle standing on our feet during a few minutes. If possible, you have asked the day before to bring a memory of a special encounter with a wild animal, insect or plant to the group. Invite each participant to bring this memory by making the sound and / or gesture of this being but do not reveal the name. It’s ok if very few people enter the circle, it reveals the fact that most people have lost the connections with the other than human world, it triggers our vulnerability.

Step 2: Now let’s invite everyone to build a forest together!  Let’s form groups of at least 5 people. Each group will listen to the collection of sounds available on the website and talk for 10 minutes about what kind of forest they can build, if there is a river, where is the ocean…etc They will agree on where each mobile phone will be located on the floor to make a spatialized sound composition. The audio player with the list of sounds is available here: 

https://nooneforgotten.eu/forest

Step 3:  Now that each team is ready, invite the groups one by one to position their devices on the floor and play the sounds (by default in loop mode) . Let's walk this forest together for 5 minutes and let’s close our eyes sometimes to feel the natural space. 

Step 4: After walking and listening to every landscape, ask the group to describe the landscape and the sensations triggered by this experience. Challenge certain aspects of the sound compositions. For example, ask if the birds are always singing in the same location and if they were thinking of moving some sounds during the presentation of their forest. Let’s explore and understand the sound composition from the perspective of ecological intelligence. Every species belongs to a certain kind of environment and we can hardly listen to a frog in the ocean or a cicada in the middle of the river.

Important notice: In this exercise we invite the participants to reveal a being without telling the name because we want to avoid classifying an animal or a plant by its taxonomy but rather understand that every being is unique and should not be reduced to a common name. Another reason is that very often we can feel bad for not being able to identify a bird for example. There are so many species that it takes years to identify wildlife. We have to learn by practice to enjoy the fact that we don’t know and feel joy each time we listen and see a new being we did not know yet.

evaluation: This special sonic experience should probably trigger strong feelings and memories of well being in nature in some participants. See how people feel energized by bringing nature inside the space. Evaluate how this exercise is revealing for people at what point we isolate ourselves from nature when we live inside buildings.

references: This practice is inspired by great teachers, Nature of course, but also Rich Blundell and the Oika project, Jon Young from the 8 Shields project and the partners from the project No One Forgotten, beyond others. Thank you!