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Short abstract

This paper examines musical sonification as an ASTS practice in which sensors, environments, artistic mapping, and community radio co-produce situated and affective ways of knowing ecological futures through more-than-human collaboration.

Long abstract

This paper positions musical sonification as a practice of Art, Science and Technology Studies (ASTS). Rather than treating sonification as a neutral technique for translating data into sound, it examines how ecological sensing, artistic mapping, technological infrastructure, and public mediation are collaboratively assembled to produce situated and affective knowledge.

The case presented draws on plant-physiological, soil, and meteorological data from an urban forest. These data are transformed into music through mapping processes that assign sonic and musical parameters to measured and derived variables. The paper argues that this mapping is a form of boundary work: it negotiates between scientific measurement, technical processing, aesthetic decision-making, and communicative intent.

The contribution, therefore, focuses less on sonification as representation and more on sonification as collaborative practice. It shows how environmental sensors, nonhuman actors, artistic choices, and community radio together create a third epistemic space in which ecological relations can be heard, interpreted, and discussed. In this sense, musical sonification can open an affective mode of engagement with environmental change and resilient futures that conventional graphs rarely provide.

By analysing how such collaborations are practised, the paper speaks directly to ASTS debates on creative and relational labour, situated knowledge, and the making of more-than-now futures.