out of touch
Human contact with nature is not merely a matter of nostalgia. It underpins how societies value land, how they make law, and how they run economies. Recent research suggests that, over the last two centuries, people’s sense of connection to the natural world has fallen sharply — by roughly 60%. The trend matters because what we notice we protect; what we do not notice we may destroy. The Guardian
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This loss did not happen by accident. It grew from a particular set of ideas about the world that took hold in Western thought. Theology, philosophy and early science offered an image of humanity as separate from, and often above, the rest of life. Law came to treat landscapes and species as property. Modern economics often treats nature as an externality, useful until it is not. Together these ideas created a practical bias: nature became a backdrop rather than an actor in public life, and its agency was ignored in politics and commerce. These are contested claims, but historians and social scientists trace the genealogy clearly. asa3.org+1
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Other worldviews tell a different story. Many Indigenous systems place people within networks of reciprocal obligation to land and non-human kin. Those ways of knowing do not separate nature from culture. Instead they encode long observation, local rules and social practice that keep ecosystems and communities in relationship. The practical value of that knowledge is increasingly recognised in environmental science and policy, especially where local stewardship helps sustain biodiversity and resilience. National Park Service+1
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If culture shapes perception, perception shapes policy. The problem today is partly sensory. Human senses capture only a narrow band of phenomena. Soil teems with vibration and chemistry beyond what most of us feel. Plants send electrical signals that move slowly across seasons. Air carries volatile chemicals we do not notice unless they reach a threshold. The mind is built on what the senses supply. If those inputs are impoverished, our moral imagination shrinks with them. We stop thinking of rivers and forests as living systems with messages and needs. The Guardian
​re-sensing nature
This is where art and sensing technology meet. The technical tools exist to detect and translate many natural phenomena. Artists and technologists have been using them to make invisible processes visible and audible. Electrodes on leaves, for instance, can convert a plant’s electrical activity into sound; sensors can map air composition into shifting colours; instruments can translate ground vibration into tempo and rhythm. These works do not only illustrate scientific facts. They change how people experience living systems. They ask viewers to listen rather than look, to attend rather than take for granted. bostonartreview.com+2tomtommag.com+2
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There are three linked reasons why these translations matter beyond novelty. First, they expand perception. When an invisible process becomes a melody or a colour, it enters the human sensorium and memory. Second, they translate scale and time. Art can compress geological or ecological time into a human-length encounter; it can slow the barely perceptible into something one can follow. Third, they redistribute agency. If a courtroom, a city council chamber, or a classroom can display the dynamic states of a wetland or an orchard in real time, decision-making may take those states into account. In short, sensing art can reintroduce nature into civic imagination. bostonartreview.com+1
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That is not to suggest that clever displays will by themselves reverse the structural drivers of environmental loss. Cities still expand, markets still value short horizons, and political incentives often favour extraction. Yet the evidence suggests this kind of approach can be part of a broader response. The researchers behind the 60% finding argue that changes to childhood education, more green space in towns and cities, and policy measures that embed nature in everyday life can slow and reverse disconnection. In other words, perceptual change supports institutional change. The Guardian
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There are practical examples. Community projects that combine local knowledge with technological mapping produce better outcomes in fisheries, rangeland management and disaster warning systems. Artists who work with sensors often partner with scientists and local communities; the result can be installations that double as monitoring tools and as civic prompts. Legal movements that grant rights to rivers, or that recognise the personhood of ecosystems, now exist in several jurisdictions. These efforts show how shifts in perception, law and practice can work together. TIME+2Southern California Law Review+2
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​​​​biosense studios
bio sense studios aims to act at this intersection. Its goal is not merely to display data. It aims to curate experiments that alter how people sense, feel and think about living systems. The work is practical and propositional. It selects projects that meet three tests: first, they translate an aspect of nature that is otherwise hidden; second, they render that translation in a way that an ordinary person can engage with; third, they orient towards public use — in education, urban design, or deliberation, not only galleries. Through weekly case studies, public events and partnerships, the initiative seeks to create a repertoire of methods and a body of evidence about what works. (For examples of artist-led sensing work, see the source list.) bostonartreview.com+1
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The ambition is both modest and wide. Modest because making a person hear a plant or see changing air does not by itself stop deforestation. Wide because sustained sensory contact can reshape the stories that societies tell about nature. Stories become policy. Policy changes incentives. New incentives change behaviour. The chain is long, but it begins with attention. To pay attention is to open the possibility of duty and care. That is the change biosense studios is designed to provoke.