Tonal is an audio project exploring water issues nationally with a special focus on the River Tone in Somerset. This first of three features dives into what’s polluting our rivers and offers some solutions. It pays special attention to otters, who as apex predators are especially vulnerable to persistent chemicals. 
Featuring interviews with Matt Wheeldon of Wessex Water, Helen Wakeham of the Environment Agency, Gideon Amos MP, Dr Liz Chadwick of the Cardiff Otter Project, Jo Pearse of the Somerset Otter Group, Neil Ogilvie of Somerset Council and Joanna Uglow of the Somerset Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group.
Intro music by Timothy Johnston.
To listen to the complete interviews, go to www.tonal-uk.com

TONAL-Pollution by Feral Practice-42min

Tonal  is an audio project exploring water issues nationally with a special focus on the River Tone in Somerset. Flow is the second of three features, and is all about flow and constriction – how water management like weirs, canalisation and urbanisation affect wildlife, with a special focus on eels  and salmon.  
It features Dr Bel Deering of Somerset Rivers Authority, artist James Aldridge, angler and scientist Simon Ratsey, Oliver Hill of the Environment Agency, artist Anne Marie Culhane  of Tidelines, and Vanessa Becker Hughes of the Somerset Eel Recovery Project.
To listen to the full interviews head to www.tonal-uk.com

Tonal - Flow by Feral Practice, 38mins

Mycorrhizal Meditation is a sound-art work by Feral Practice that draws us into the networks in nature. It takes the form of a guided meditation (15 mins) journeying through the human body and down into the ‘underworld’ of living soil, with its mycorrhizal network formed of plant roots and fungal threads. It combines spoken word and sound recordings of movement and rhythm made in wooded places, and sonification of plants and fungi. Feral Practice complicates the idea of nature as ‘ultimate digital detox’, and alerts us to the startling interconnectivity of beyond-human nature, the ‘wood-wide-web’ that predates our digital connectivity by millennia.

Mycorrhizal Meditation

Feral Practice and Marcus Coates are delighted to release the first of three podcasts for Ask Somerset’s Plants.

Podcast 1: Quantock Hills - Feral Practice and Marcus Coates are in conversation with Plantlife ecologist Dr Alison Smith.

Recording took place at Holford Coombe, part of the Quantock Hills Nature Reserve.

Questions addressed and plants discussed:

Anonymous – How can we best engage with others, when we see so many polarising views and entrenched positions. How can we put aside differences to achieve something genuinely shared and mutually enriching together? Plants: Lichens, including Witches Whiskers and Barnacle lichens.

Kerry Grant – In the light of recent leadership contests, in which we find ourselves confronting a scenario where both candidates are seriously flawed, how would the plants select the best leader? Plants: Rhododendron, Laurel, Silver Birch, Ivy.

Anonymous – Can the stars light the sky forever? Plants: Polypody Ferns, Mosses

 

Ask Somerset’s Plants brings the knowledge of local flora to bear on our everyday human problems and dilemmas.

Ask Somerset’s Plants is steered by the questions that Somerset audiences posed. Not questions about nature or plants, as you might expect, but about people’s own lives and human society, questions that vary from the political and societal to the deeply personal. Each walk and conversation visits plants in some of Somerset’s diverse and specialised habitats, and is guided by the questions we received.

Podcasts 2 and 3 will be shared here on the 28th September  and 5 October, as part of Somerset Art Weeks Festival.

Ask Somerset’s Plants is commissioned by Somerset Art Works.

Ask Somerset's Plants | Quantock Hills

Podcast 2: The Levels 

Feral Practice and Marcus Coates are in conversation with plant scientist Dr Nigel Chaffey and local wildlife guide Deon Warner. Recording took place at Shapwick Heath and West Sedgemoor, on the Somerset Levels.

Questions addressed and plants discussed:

Jenny Melling - How can I deal with the seeming impossibility of knowing the whole truth? Plants: plant perceptions, Oak tree, mycorrhizal fungi, woodland connectivity.

Anonymous - I am an eighteen-stone woman. I have been this weight for most of my adult life. I've repeatedly tried diets, but to no avail. What would the plants suggest I do? Plants: photosynthesis, Eyebright, Sundew, Bladderwort.

Luminara - How can I stay in my tenderness, as I navigate my way in a competitive and precarious career? Plants: Reed Mace.

Anonymous - Can the plants explain, considering the supposed wisdom of hindsight, how we are seeing a new rise of extremist views, and can they advise on a positive response? Plants: Common Dock

Ask Somerset's Plants | The Levels

5.10.19 - We are delighted to release the third and final podcast for Ask Somerset's Plants.

Podcast 3: Cheddar Feral Practice and Marcus Coates are in conversation with botanist Liz McDonnell

Recording took place in Kings Wood and in various locations in Cheddar Gorge.

Questions addressed and plants discussed:

Guinevere King - How do I accept my uniqeness without berating myself for being so different to everyone else? Plants: Autumn Crocus (Naked Ladies), Cheddar Whitebeam.

Anonymous - In earlier days when I had no money, I thought having some would be enough to keep me happy. Now I have money, property and good fortune. I am extremely happy, but I still seek to add to my assets in the late summer of my life. What is it about the human species that keeps us striving? Plants: Wild Garlic, Ancient Lime trees.

Penny Elphick - Fleeting ideas are often the most creative, but how to capture them and make them stand still, that is the question. Plants: Wood Avens.

Ask Somerset's Plants | Cheddar

Fiona MacDonald works collectively as Feral Practice to create art projects that deepen and expand our connection beyond the human. Often people set up a divide between human and nonhuman being and between different categories of knowledge and understanding. Feral Practice works across these barriers.

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Other tracks from Feral Practice