Biophonic

Biophonic is an evolving augmented reality work about interspecies communication: about what it might mean if technology helped us actually listen to the living world, instead of just managing it. The piece projects participants a hundred years into the future and uses their real location, paired with climate projections from Probable Futures, to render the environment they would find themselves standing in. A coastal site might be partly underwater. A familiar park might be unrecognizable. Inside that future, a responsive plant entity listens, answers, and slowly merges with the participant as they interact.

Communication is the foundation of all collaboration, and yet between humans and the rest of the living world it's almost entirely missing. Plants signal chemically; ecosystems coordinate in ways we're only starting to register. Biophonic asks a hopeful, speculative question: a hundred years from now, will we have built the tools to hear them? And what would it feel like to be on the other side of that conversation?

As participants engage through voice, hand movement, and proximity, they co-create a living melody with the plant. Its shape, color, and sound change in response. Over time the boundary between human and plant softens, with each form gradually morphing into the other. A meditation on empathy, scale, and the long arc of repair.

Biophonic began in 2024 as a mobile AR experience built during the EdgeCity Lanna art residency in Chiang Mai, Thailand. A first sketch of what it might feel like to share a sensory exchange with a non-human entity.

The second iteration moved the work onto Snap Spectacles. With both hands free of a phone, the interaction with the plant could finally become natural and physical: gesture, proximity, and full-body presence in shared space. The encounter the piece had always wanted to be.

The current iteration, selected for the AWE USA 2026 Art Festival, is a complete rebuild for Snap's latest Spectacles. It expands the technical stack with location-aware climate projection, deeper audio reactivity, and richer interspecies interactivity. Participants step a hundred years into the future of wherever they're standing, and catch a glimpse of a world where this kind of conversation is finally possible.

The concept for Biophonic began with a hand-drawn illustration in Procreate: an imagined hybrid of human and plant, communicating through sound waves and color bursts. This visual served as the foundation for a speculative future where technology enables interspecies dialogue, and where humans and plants co-create shared experiences through sensory exchange.

From there, I brought the concept into 3D using Gravity Sketch in virtual reality, where I sculpted the initial forms of the plant-human hybrid. I then refined the models and created animations in Blender, crafting organic motions that reflected the slow, intelligent way plants move and adapt. For the visual effects and 2D overlays, I used After Effects to animate elements like chemical signals and interface motifs. The soundscape, a mix of ambient tones and reactive musical phrases, was composed and edited in Reaper. Finally, I built the augmented reality experience in Lens Studio, integrating all the assets and scripting interactivity, materials, and logic.

This project was an opportunity to explore themes of interconnection and empathy, using a multi-tool, multi-discipline pipeline to create an immersive world where communication extends beyond the human.