Text by Damien Delorme
Images by Séverine Morfin and Yann Bagot
︎
October 19, 2026
I walk toward the Parc de la Poudrerie (Seine-Saint-Denis). Leaving the Livry-Sevran RER station, I follow the Ourcq Canal, an “ecological corridor.” I hear my footsteps on the asphalt. The bicycle helmet hanging from my bag knocks against my right thigh at every step.
The city’s murmur persists: the drone of airplanes, the whoosh of departing trains, the hum of engines everywhere. In front of me, two teenagers talk while pushing a crushed can along the ground. Behind me, a man listens to the radio. Toward the golf course, for the first time, a flock of green parakeets comes to the foreground of the soundscape—louder than the anthropophonic—or capitalophonic—sounds of flows of people and goods propelled by fossil energies.
I enter the park through Gate 10 along an old railway line. Acorns fall from oak trees, and dry leaves crunch beneath my feet. In the distance, children shout. I arrive at the Mauroir pavilion, where in the 19th century workers produced explosive powder thanks to three steam engines. A singular condensation of military, thermo-fossil, and capitalist history within a forest remnant at the heart of an ocean of concrete.
Figure 1: Quadriphonic recording setup. © Séverine Morfin.How can we better listen to the world?
How can we listen more carefully to our environment?
How can the great orchestra of nature be welcomed onto a musical stage?
How can the sounds of living beings be included?
How can bio-geo-anthropophony be offered to musical listening—a refuge for open attention?
What frameworks can hold the clamor of the Earth?
How can we live together in the soundscape?
How can we listen more carefully to our environment?
How can the great orchestra of nature be welcomed onto a musical stage?
How can the sounds of living beings be included?
How can bio-geo-anthropophony be offered to musical listening—a refuge for open attention?
What frameworks can hold the clamor of the Earth?
How can we live together in the soundscape?
Video: Chorème live at Théâtre de Vanves.
Chorème is an art-science project led by viola player and composer Séverine Morfin. Bringing together contemporary, traditional, and jazz musicians, along with two researchers and a visual artist, this project proposes a more-than-human dialogue between a unique string quartet and soundscapes recorded at the Parc forestier de la Poudrerie (93). Birdsong, bat calls, and toad croaks are “played” alongside instruments in an elegant, melodious, and sometimes hypnotic repertoire, where sounds and affects resonate organically. More than a piece of music, Chorème is a transdisciplinary laboratory that aims to transform, through creative dialogue, both aesthetic and scientific practices.
Two guiding figures of this project are Pauline Oliveros and Hildegard Westerkamp, pioneering sound artists and composers associated with deep listening and field recording. Since the 1970s, they have explored ways of opening musical listening to the more-than-human, transforming both music and our relationships to environments. They contributed to reclaiming—repairing, asserting, and healing—the sensory relationship to living environments and opening listening to the political and cosmic power of the sounds of living beings.
Two guiding figures of this project are Pauline Oliveros and Hildegard Westerkamp, pioneering sound artists and composers associated with deep listening and field recording. Since the 1970s, they have explored ways of opening musical listening to the more-than-human, transforming both music and our relationships to environments. They contributed to reclaiming—repairing, asserting, and healing—the sensory relationship to living environments and opening listening to the political and cosmic power of the sounds of living beings.
Figure 2: Céline Grangey recording the pond at dusk. © Séverine Morfin.Chorème continues this inspiration, situating it in a park within the Parisian suburbs, in one of the poorest French departments, marked by working-class histories. Over nearly a year, Céline Grangey and Séverine Morfin recorded sounds throughout the park to create a work exploring nocturnal atmospheres, from dusk to dawn. Performing music there displaces contemporary creation in three “margins”: a forest remnant, a working-class suburb, and a hybrid contemporary music combining jazz, noise, and electronic styles offered to passersby and the park itself.
There is a clear intention: to suture the great divide between humans and nature—a divide that has exiled most natural sounds from musical pleasure. Indeed, modern anthropocentric cultures have separated musical listening from environmental sounds by confining aesthetics to concert halls or overpowering outdoor sound systems that often contribute to noise pollution.
There is a clear intention: to suture the great divide between humans and nature—a divide that has exiled most natural sounds from musical pleasure. Indeed, modern anthropocentric cultures have separated musical listening from environmental sounds by confining aesthetics to concert halls or overpowering outdoor sound systems that often contribute to noise pollution.
Figure 3: Séverine Morfin, Malik Ziad, Guillaume Magne, Odile Auboin: final rehearsal in the park. © Yann Bagot.
A distinctive aspect of Chorème is that opening music to nature—or deterritorializing nature within music—occurs through amplified, effect‑processed sound in a public space. Through electrified sound systems powered by nuclear energy, signals processed in rare‑earth‑filled devices, and transmitted via globalized infrastructures, a biocosmopolitical space emerges. In this electronically structured public space, sound facades allow interspecies interactions to begin.
What happens when natural sounds are included in musical creation? Beyond creating a space of encounter (here through electroacoustic diffusion), specific modes of playing and interaction make mutual transformation possible.
The introduction juxtaposes rhythmic ostinato and ambient layers. Twilight bird sounds appear and engage in dialogue with a mandole solo. Malik Ziad recounts a dream of a bird singing beautifully—only to awaken and hear a real bird anticipating, in its vocalizations, the inflections of the muezzin’s call to prayer. A spiritualized bird, a cosmic messenger. “Musicians are only there to transmit the Word (Kalim),” Malik recalls.
Various instrumental techniques open listening: noise-based explorations, glissandi, subtle articulations, unconventional bowing or plucking, and electronic effects (reverb, delay, octaver, freeze) that create a liminal listening state—half connected to a source, half acousmatic. Referential clarity fades, making space for other sounds and voices. Musical parameters—tempo, dynamics, intensity—are transduced into aesthetic effects that allow integration of an “ecoacoustic assemblage” (Maria Ochoa Gautier).
What happens when natural sounds are included in musical creation? Beyond creating a space of encounter (here through electroacoustic diffusion), specific modes of playing and interaction make mutual transformation possible.
The introduction juxtaposes rhythmic ostinato and ambient layers. Twilight bird sounds appear and engage in dialogue with a mandole solo. Malik Ziad recounts a dream of a bird singing beautifully—only to awaken and hear a real bird anticipating, in its vocalizations, the inflections of the muezzin’s call to prayer. A spiritualized bird, a cosmic messenger. “Musicians are only there to transmit the Word (Kalim),” Malik recalls.
Various instrumental techniques open listening: noise-based explorations, glissandi, subtle articulations, unconventional bowing or plucking, and electronic effects (reverb, delay, octaver, freeze) that create a liminal listening state—half connected to a source, half acousmatic. Referential clarity fades, making space for other sounds and voices. Musical parameters—tempo, dynamics, intensity—are transduced into aesthetic effects that allow integration of an “ecoacoustic assemblage” (Maria Ochoa Gautier).
Figure 4: Vibrant scenography. © Yann Bagot.
In this expanded listening, natural sounds reveal their complexity and richness—often surpassing human polyphony in density and interplay. The “great orchestra of nature” (in the sense of Schafer and Krause) renders even the most intricate human compositions comparatively minimal. Instruments thus serve to enhance listening to natural soundscapes, not dominate them.
In the “pond chorus,” recorded with hydrophones and microphones, frogs’ rhythms groove powerfully. Later, bat echolocations—shifted from 70,000 Hz to audible frequencies—become sonic waves moving through space. Spatialization and dynamics integrate these sounds into the listening experience, blurring the boundary between composed sound and the surrounding forest. During one performance, parakeets and crows seamlessly joined the composition, leaving even the musicians uncertain of what was played versus what was living.
One effect of this integration is the destabilization of human musical exceptionalism. Human musical complexity appears simplified when compared to the dense ecologies of living sound. Human music becomes a melodic-harmonic minimalism, repositioned not as a supremacist peak but as a margin within the broader “Music of the world.”
Technology plays a key role in this reconnection, enabling dialogue between instrumented humans and amplified nonhumans. Through a double metamorphosis—artialization of natural sounds and naturalization of human musical practices—a performative encounter space emerges. Harmonic writing becomes a frame for birds’ riffs; improvisation becomes interspecies collaboration.
As night progresses, rain introduces a calming effect—perhaps through white-noise density or amplified droplets. Geophony soothes, suggesting an elemental need for repair. Dawn arrives with woodpeckers’ transformed rhythms, evoking cosmic resonance. Malik Ziad uses the guembri to call nonhuman beings—an instrument traditionally used for this purpose. The project invites further development: What makes music alive? What is life in music? How can artialization lead to an ecological transformation of listening in daily life? How can deeper reciprocity and even conflict among sound worlds be explored?
Cosmic polyphony multiplies roles—humans and nonhumans alike become rhythm-makers, ambient creators, and soloists in a shared ecoacoustic assemblage. This expanded listening reshapes how we inhabit the sonic world.
In the “pond chorus,” recorded with hydrophones and microphones, frogs’ rhythms groove powerfully. Later, bat echolocations—shifted from 70,000 Hz to audible frequencies—become sonic waves moving through space. Spatialization and dynamics integrate these sounds into the listening experience, blurring the boundary between composed sound and the surrounding forest. During one performance, parakeets and crows seamlessly joined the composition, leaving even the musicians uncertain of what was played versus what was living.
One effect of this integration is the destabilization of human musical exceptionalism. Human musical complexity appears simplified when compared to the dense ecologies of living sound. Human music becomes a melodic-harmonic minimalism, repositioned not as a supremacist peak but as a margin within the broader “Music of the world.”
Technology plays a key role in this reconnection, enabling dialogue between instrumented humans and amplified nonhumans. Through a double metamorphosis—artialization of natural sounds and naturalization of human musical practices—a performative encounter space emerges. Harmonic writing becomes a frame for birds’ riffs; improvisation becomes interspecies collaboration.
As night progresses, rain introduces a calming effect—perhaps through white-noise density or amplified droplets. Geophony soothes, suggesting an elemental need for repair. Dawn arrives with woodpeckers’ transformed rhythms, evoking cosmic resonance. Malik Ziad uses the guembri to call nonhuman beings—an instrument traditionally used for this purpose. The project invites further development: What makes music alive? What is life in music? How can artialization lead to an ecological transformation of listening in daily life? How can deeper reciprocity and even conflict among sound worlds be explored?
Cosmic polyphony multiplies roles—humans and nonhumans alike become rhythm-makers, ambient creators, and soloists in a shared ecoacoustic assemblage. This expanded listening reshapes how we inhabit the sonic world.
Chorème
Séverine Morfin – viola and composition
Odile Auboin – solo viola with the Ensemble Intercontemporain
Malik Ziad – guembri, mandol; leading figure in Gnawa and Chaâbi music
Guillaume Magne – guitarist with the Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ)
Céline Grangey – sound engineer and sound designer; biophony recordings
Damien Delorme – researcher in philosophy, University of Lausanne
Yann Tremblay – researcher in eco-ethology at IRD; bioacoustics
This article was written after the premiere of Chorème, performed live in situ at the Parc de la Poudrerie on October 11, 2025. The excerpts are recordings from the live performance at the Théâtre de Vanves on April 16, 2026.
Header image: Hybrid scene in the Parc de la Poudrerie featuring Yann Bagot's artwork. © Séverine Morfin.
About the author: Damien Delorme holds a doctorate in philosophy and theology. He teaches philosophy and environmental ethics at the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne, and Lyon. His research focuses on conservation values, care ethics, virtue ethics, the ecological self, and the philosophy of acoustic ecologies. His practice of field philosophy explores themes such as ecotopias, ecospirituality, ecofeminism, environmental art, and agrarian alternatives. He is the author of L’Autre rêve américain: un voyage à vélo vers le soi écologique (Actes Sud, 2025) and L’Éveil des natures (Academic Press, 2026). He is also co-editor of Manifeste pour une philosophie de terrain (EUD, 2023) and Écologie en première personne. Approches interdisciplinaires de l’expérience plus-qu’humaine (Academic Press, forthcoming 2027).
Séverine Morfin – viola and composition
Odile Auboin – solo viola with the Ensemble Intercontemporain
Malik Ziad – guembri, mandol; leading figure in Gnawa and Chaâbi music
Guillaume Magne – guitarist with the Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ)
Céline Grangey – sound engineer and sound designer; biophony recordings
Damien Delorme – researcher in philosophy, University of Lausanne
Yann Tremblay – researcher in eco-ethology at IRD; bioacoustics
This article was written after the premiere of Chorème, performed live in situ at the Parc de la Poudrerie on October 11, 2025. The excerpts are recordings from the live performance at the Théâtre de Vanves on April 16, 2026.
Header image: Hybrid scene in the Parc de la Poudrerie featuring Yann Bagot's artwork. © Séverine Morfin.
About the author: Damien Delorme holds a doctorate in philosophy and theology. He teaches philosophy and environmental ethics at the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne, and Lyon. His research focuses on conservation values, care ethics, virtue ethics, the ecological self, and the philosophy of acoustic ecologies. His practice of field philosophy explores themes such as ecotopias, ecospirituality, ecofeminism, environmental art, and agrarian alternatives. He is the author of L’Autre rêve américain: un voyage à vélo vers le soi écologique (Actes Sud, 2025) and L’Éveil des natures (Academic Press, 2026). He is also co-editor of Manifeste pour une philosophie de terrain (EUD, 2023) and Écologie en première personne. Approches interdisciplinaires de l’expérience plus-qu’humaine (Academic Press, forthcoming 2027).
References
Gautier, A. M. O. (2016). Acoustic Multinaturalism, the Value of Nature, and the Nature of Music in Ecomusicology. boundary 2, 43(1), 107‑141.
https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-3340661
Krause, B. L. (2016). Wild soundscapes : Discovering the voice of the natural world (Revised edition). Yale University Press.
Nadrigny, P. (2025). Sonder le monde : Arts sonores, réalisme, environnement. MF.
Schafer, R. M. (1977). The tuning of the world. Knopf.
Serres, M. (2011). Musique. Le Pommier.
Gautier, A. M. O. (2016). Acoustic Multinaturalism, the Value of Nature, and the Nature of Music in Ecomusicology. boundary 2, 43(1), 107‑141.
https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-3340661
Krause, B. L. (2016). Wild soundscapes : Discovering the voice of the natural world (Revised edition). Yale University Press.
Nadrigny, P. (2025). Sonder le monde : Arts sonores, réalisme, environnement. MF.
Schafer, R. M. (1977). The tuning of the world. Knopf.
Serres, M. (2011). Musique. Le Pommier.