Nature + Communication with Ashley Eliza Williams
About the Episode
Do plants speak? Might rocks store memory? Can trees hear? Is soil perceptive? Can lichen give us an ozone report? And, do the hairs on your arm have something to say?
Humans most often think of “language” as written, spoken, or even signed, but communication happens—or struggles to happen—constantly, all around us. In fact, your own body translates messages without your conscious awareness all day, every day, passing chemical and electrical signals between your cells, telling you when to eat, when to be afraid, and when and how to respond to other sensory information.
So, if humans are part of nature, is the rest of nature always communicating, too?
If this is sounding a bit animistic, or even like I’m saying nature might have a case of synesthesia, well, welcome to This Plus That, a show about connecting the seemingly un-connectable and why it matters. Wild mash-ups like this are what we do here. In this particular conversation, I talk with painter, sculptor, and amateur ecologist, Ashley Eliza Williams, about nature’s communication attempts, and those communication attempts are or are not successful.
Episode Details
About Ashley (she/her)
Ashley Eliza Williams is a painter, sculptor, and amateur ecologist exploring new ways of interacting with nature and with each other. She received a BA from UVA and an MFA from The University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a recent MASS MoCA North Adams Project grantee and has been a resident artist at Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch, Millay Colony, Alte Schule Germany, the Shangyuan Art Museum in China, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at museums, galleries, and scientific institutions. She is a member of the research-focused NYC art collective Sprechgesang Institute. Williams has taught painting, sculpture, and color theory for six years. She currently lives in Massachusetts.
What We Discuss
Anxiety, awkwardness, and “failed” communication attempts as subjects of Ashley’s work.
The dialogue between plants, animals, and even celestial bodies, which humans often envy as we struggle to communicate with each other.
The “mutual aid” practices of nature, like lichen and trees.
A story about the forest near Ashley’s suburban childhood home, the conversion of that land into a strip mall, and how it turned her into an environmentalist at an early age.
What lichen communicate to us about pollution.
The language we use about the natural world and how it shapes our engagement with it, and the way our engagement with nature shapes our language in return, including how we think about time.
The Western perception of time as scarce, and how it also shapes our language, which then impacts our behavior.
Ashley’s dad and his creative way of conjuring up original bedtime stories with her and her sister when they were young.
Her fascination with magical beings and the history of monsters.
Why we might pray to pollinator deities in the future.
The ancient memory of rocks and trees.
And much more.
Sources Mentioned
“How the Concept of Deep Time is Changing,” from The Atlantic.
“Forget ‘the environment’: we need new words to convey life’s wonders” by George Monbiot in The Guardian.
Ashley’s “Communication Attempts” series.
This On Being interview is at least one place that Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about having “photosynthesis envy.” Here’s her quote from that same interview, which Ashley references, about pronoun use:
“In the English language, if we want to speak of that sugar maple or that salamander, the only grammar that we have to do so is to call those beings an ‘it.’ And if I called my grandmother or the person sitting across the room from me an it that would be so rude, right? And we wouldn’t tolerate that for members of our own species, but we not only tolerate it, but it’s the only way we have in the English language to speak of other beings, is as ‘it.’ In Potawatomi, the cases that we have are animate and inanimate, and it is impossible in our language to speak of other living beings as ‘it’s.”
New Scientist, on how “Antelope activate the acacia’s alarm system.”
The “Smarty Plants” episode of Radiolab that I mention, where they “dig into the work of evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano, who turns our brain-centered worldview on its head through a series of clever experiments that show plants doing things we never would've imagined.”
I think this might be the Radiolab episode I mentioned that talks about how dying trees can send nutrients to other trees, but in case I’m wrong, here’s an article from Scientific American, discussing that same thing.
How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology: the piece on lichen in a lab and how we couldn’t recreate it until we realized it had a third component.
Arrival—should I just have a permanent button in the navigation menu of my website that goes straight to the film at this point? Here’s an article on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, used in the film, and whether it has any merit.
Here’s the major research—including an interactive tool—on the way your zip code affects how long you live.
Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman
Here’s a link to my interview with Lincoln Carr, who told me about Einstein’s Dreams.
The Guardian on Margaret Atwood and others furious over the Oxford Junior Dictionary’s removal of words related to the natural world.
A primer on the of core principles of Emergent Strategy, as written by adrienne maree brown, including that “There is always enough time for the right work.”
SciComm Camp and Alie Ward and the Ologies interview with Robert Ulrich on Biomineralogy (SHELLS).
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Credits
Audio engineering by the team at Upfire Digital.
All of my music is provided by the in-house musicians at Slip.stream.
Episode Transcript
Coming soon, hopefully! Would you be willing to help? Email me at brandi@thisplusthat.com!
