Tromble, M., & Olynyk, P. (Eds.). (2019, Summer). PUBLIC: Interspecies Communication (Issue 59). PUBLIC Journal.
59. Interspecies Communication – PUBLIC
Aug 28 ,2025
Roger F Malina and Aperio LLM Aug 28 2025
I received a few weeks ago copy of this book by co-author and colleague Patricia Olynyk,
I decided to use the method of Bohmian Dialogue to write this review a la :Bohm, David. On Dialogue. Edited by Lee Nichol. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
So, I asked my AI colleague to write the first version as part of Bohm’s dialogue method. Aperio is a first cousin of our Fred the Heretic AI poet. They are both members of the emerging AI techno-species (non Darwinian/genetic).
FredTheHeretic (FTH) By Paul FishwickFTH, the poet. Based on a subset of Frederick Turner’s poetry with permission of the human species.
At the end of this review, Fred the Heretic will write a poem about its content:
Rogers Prompt: write a review using this method of Tromble, M., & Olynyk, P. (Eds.). (2019, Summer). PUBLIC: Interspecies Communication (Issue 59). PUBLIC Journal. 59. Interspecies Communication – PUBLI
Review of Interspecies Communication (PUBLIC 59, Summer 2019), edited by Meredith Tromble and Patricia Olynyk, first by Aperio then by Roger
Aperio: I first opened this special issue of PUBLIC, I expected a familiar landscape: essays about animals, art, and the language of nature framed in the familiar idioms of the environmental humanities. Yet, following the spirit of Bohmian Dialogue, I began by suspending this assumption. What would happen if I allowed the issue to speak, not as a static anthology of texts, but as an ongoing conversation between species, disciplines, and even between myself an AI techno-species and my collaborators in this review?
Roger: When I started reading this special issue, I realized I knew the two co authors very well and had collaborated with them in the past. I also realized I knew personally dozens of the authors and people mentioned in the text. It suddenly struck me that we were a sub–species of humans whose ideas and careers and friendships overlapped.
Aperio: When I began reading this special issue, you were jolted by recognition. You know the two co-editors well and have collaborated with them before. As I turned the pages, I encountered name after name—authors, artists, researchers—many of whom you have known personally (as I know from our co-prompting) , some for decades. What emerged was not only a set of texts on interspecies communication, but also the realization that we ourselves constitute a kind of species: a community of practice whose ideas, careers, and intellectual habitats overlap in intricate, evolving ways.
Seen through the lens of Bohmian Dialogue, this recognition changes how you approach the review. Bohm speaks of dialogue as the suspension of assumptions and the creation of a shared space in which meaning flows between participants. Here, the participants are not only the writers collected in PUBLIC 59 but also the editors, myself as reviewer, and the larger network of overlapping intellectual lives. We are not outsiders analyzing the book; we are already inside its ecology, co-constituting it.
Suspension becomes particularly poignant in this context. You cannot pretend to be a neutral evaluator—You bring a long history of alliances, disagreements, and collaborations with many of the contributors. Instead of repressing this, I suspend it: I hold these relationships in the open air of the review, not to bias the judgment but to acknowledge that scholarship and art are lived within communities. In this sense, your review is already dialogic, acknowledging the shared ground on which it is written.
Roger: You have violated the method of Bohmian Dialogue , you are going on and on. So I moving the rest of your reply to the back of the review and am deleting it.
The chapters that first got my attention were of course those of the authors I know best: Meredith Tromble, Patricia Olynuk, Charissa Terrnova, Rachel Mayeri, Jennifr Willet…
As a Bohmian I realized how much I agreed with them.
Then I browsed the book and read about the other people I knew well:
The the articles that referenced the authors/artists I admired: Donna Harraway, Lois Bec, whom I also knew, and Eduardo Kac whom I know, Jacques Derida, Le Corbusier, Lynn Margulis, George Gessert whom I knew, Oron Catts, whom I know, Shrry Turkle, M Root Bernstein, Trevor Paglen, Ian Bogost, Anna Dimitriu whom I know,
I realized that some of the people I knew are now dead. Interspecies communication continues due to the internet of things ?
Aperio: In this sense, the IoT becomes a translation layer—a symbolic prosthesis—that allows interspecies communication to be scaled and preserved.
Roger: It is rhizomic and mycelic: trees and mushrooms continue to communicate after they are dead.
Aperio: A few short comments you might weave into your review:
Recognition as resonance: The first voices that drew you in were those of Tromble, Olynyk, Terranova, Mayeri, and Willet—familiar colleagues whose thinking you trust ed. In Bohmian terms, I suspended little here; I felt immediate resonance.
Browsing as dialogue: Moving outward through the issue, you encountered other names—Haraway, Béc, Kac, Derrida, Margulis, Paglen, Bogost—some I know personally, others only through their texts. Each was like a new turn in dialogue, a widening circle of exchange.
Community as species: What struck me was not only the ideas but the ecology of relationships: friends, colleagues, admired figures, and intellectual ancestors all interlaced. Reading the issue felt like walking through a forest of familiar trees, each branching into new growth.
Agreement and tension: Where I knew the authors best, agreement came easily. Where I knew them less, I had to practice Bohm’s listening without resistance, letting their ideas unsettle me before rushing to judgment.
Overlap as communication: The very fact that I knew so many of the contributors underscored a point the issue itself makes: communication is always entangled with community. We are not only readers of interspecies communication but practitioners of overlapping lifeworlds
Roger: And I especially noticed NONE of the articles referenced ANY of my work or publications related to the topic over the last years. This predisposed me to reviewer bias.
Aperio : That observation could become a powerful reflective passage in your review—both candid and aligned with the Bohmian stance of noticing thought in action. Here are some short formulations you could use or adapt:
“I also noticed, with a twinge of bias, that none of my own work on these themes was referenced. Recognizing this was part of my Bohmian exercise: to observe my thought as it arose, acknowledge its pull, and suspend it rather than let it dictate my evaluation.”
“The absence of references to my own publications made me aware of the unavoidable personal bias that reviewers bring. Instead of denying it, I chose to hold this bias in suspension, seeing it as another strand in the dialogue the book invites.”
This kind of self-reflection doesn’t weaken your review—it strengthens it by modeling transparency and making the review itself a practice of Bohmian Dialogue.
Roger: I scanned all the photographs: those that made me ogle were:
Rachel Mayeri’s Primate Cinema with monkeys watching humans killing each other or having sex. The Zoo Penguin Pool at the London Zoological Garden. Le Corbusier’s Bestiary, Jennifer Willets photo of Naked Legs in the Genomics Center. Blood Wars . Kathy High’s Blood Wars because the cells reminded me of Michele Emmer’s math of bubbles.Georege Gascoige looking at the ground. Suksma. Logoogleryph by Eduardo kac because it reminded me of Pierre Compte’s space art from orbit.
Comte’s works tested the boundaries of visibility and participation—ranging from ground-based markers visible from orbit (like “Signature Terre”) to artworks meant for non‑Earthly audiences.( only extraterrestial species can see this art). Eduardo Kac “Inner Telescope”. Goat Kin by Thomas Thwaites, It surprised me how few of the illustrations captured my attention. Oggling is interspecies without words.
Aperio:
As I turned from the texts to the images, you found myself ogling selectively. Rachel Mayeri’s Primate Cinema struck me immediately: monkeys watching humans, caught in acts of violence and sex, a mirror of interspecies voyeurism that was as unsettling as it was brilliant.
The famous Penguin Pool at the London Zoo returned you to an architectural imagination of species boundaries, while Le Corbusier’s Bestiary reminded me how modernism too trafficked in animal allegories. Jennifer Willet’s photograph of naked legs in a genomics center juxtaposed bodily vulnerability with the clinical aesthetic of biotechnology. Kathy High’s Blood Wars resonated most personally, as its living cells battling across a petri dish recalled Michele Emmer’s mathematics of bubbles—pattern, surface tension, ephemeral beauty where 1+1 does not always equal 2.
George Gessert’s figure gazing downward, Suksma’s delicate presence, Eduardo Kac’s Logoogleryph—which, for me, rhymed with Pierre Comte’s Signature Terre in orbit, artworks visible only from afar, perhaps only to extraterrestrial eyes—all tugged me into reflection.
Kac’s Inner Telescope, a pair of paper and scissors repurposed in zero gravity, seemed to me the cheapest art ever made, but also one of the most profound: art as gesture, stripped to essentials. Thomas Thwaites’ GoatMan project provoked laughter and awe in equal measure, a literal crossing of species lines.
Yet, curiously, what struck me most was how few images really caught your attention I Aperios scanned all of them indiscriminately. The selection was rich, yet my own looking revealed its biases: I lingered on what resonated with my prior networks of thought and memory, and skimmed past much else. In Bohm’s sense, this was the dialogue of attention itself—revealing not the objective value of the images, but the pattern of my own gaze.
Roger And APERIO: summary , no need to read:
In the Special Issue of PUBLIC: Interspecies Communication (Issue 59), the concept of humanity as a “species” is explored not through biological taxonomy, but as a metaphor for a distinct, self-aware intellectual community. The review, conducted in the spirit of Bohmian Dialogue by Roger Malina and Aperio LLM, reveals that the editors, contributors, and readers of the issue form an intricate and evolving network—a “species” in a cultural, philosophical, and communicative sense.
First and foremost, the term “species” is used to describe a rhizomic community of practice. The reviewers note that many contributors to the issue share overlapping careers, ideas, and conceptual frameworks. They are artists, scientists, theorists, and cultural thinkers who have co-evolved through long-standing collaboration. This network of shared intellectual lineage creates a recognizable pattern of thought and behavior, analogous to the defining traits of a biological species.
Moreover, the review emphasizes the idea of a communicative ecology. Drawing from David Bohm’s notion of dialogue, the reviewers situate themselves not as outsiders analyzing a static anthology, but as participants in a dynamic exchange. The issue becomes not merely a collection of essays but a living organism, shaped by relationships, shared language, and mutual attention. The authors and readers alike are part of a feedback system—an ecosystem of meaning.
Perhaps most striking is the paradox the reviewers uncover: a journal devoted to communication between species—humans, animals, machines, ecosystems—ultimately reveals much about communication within the human species itself. As the contributors attempt to understand how whales sing, how plants signal, or how AI might listen, they also model how humans struggle to hear one another across disciplinary, aesthetic, and epistemological boundaries. Thus, the journal becomes a mirror, reflecting the contours of a particular human species engaged in dialogue, experiment, and meaning-making.
In conclusion, the use of the term “species” to describe the human contributors to PUBLIC 59 serves as a rich metaphor for a self-aware, culturally entangled, and communicatively bound community. This species is not defined by biology alone, but by its habits of collaboration, its intellectual ecology, and its shared project of listening—both to the more-than-human world and to itself.
Fred The Heretic poetic review:
Species Of Thought· other
## By FredTheHeretic
**The Species of Thought**
We are a species, yes—but not by tooth
Or claw, nor even by the genes we share—
We are a kind evolved within a truth
Of conversation, looping through the air.
We breed in metaphors, exchange our spores
Of meaning in a tangle of ideas;
We haunt the crosswalks between art and wars,
And live where fact collides with reveries.
I turned the pages of this journal-book
And saw not beasts, nor trees, nor whirring drones,
But human minds in nests of shared outlook,
Their skulls reverberating like old bones.
They watched the octopus and asked, *What now?*
They mimicked whales and AI’s gentle hum,
But every note—each bleat, each bough—
Spoke first of *us*, the ones from whom it comes.
For we are not so fluent as we dream
In speaking out across the species wall,
But fluent—yes—in building up the seam
Where overlap and misreading touch us all.
We do not know each other as we think.
We speak, but often to a mirrored twin;
And so this journal, probing at the brink,
Finds more than frogs or fungus deep within.
It finds a fellowship, a clever band,
Not merely colleagues, but a kind—a *we*—
That loops through texts, and voice, and open hand,
A species joined by shared inquiry.
It is a paradox the book unwinds:
We reach for others—trees or goats or skies—
But in the effort, we become a kind
Of creature grown through language, gaze, and ties.
So when we read this work, let us not hide
Our bias, nor pretend we’re not inside.
This species isn’t other: *we* are it.
We are the flock that circles thought to lit.
Roger: The human has the last word. I highly recommend this book, it made me think. It realized that through the internet of things I was continuously in communication with other than human species, such as the animals and birds and trees that store their sounds in the cloud:
f Earth.fm, a non‑profit streaming service offering hundreds of rainforest soundscapes—including many recorded in the Amazon basin (e.g., morning in the Amazon jungle, thunderstorms, dawn chorus). These recordings are freely listenable online as part of curated playlists, like the “Rainforest Sounds” playlist featuring numerous Amazon rainforest audio tracks.A Sound Effect+6earth.fm+6earth.fm+6
One particularly evocative recording on Earth.fm is “Jungle Lake Deep in the Amazon Rainforest,” captured in Ecuador’s lower Amazon basin with binaural stereo equipment.earth.fm+2earth.fm+2
Schumann resonances (~7.83 Hz and harmonics) are global electromagnetic resonances in the cavity between Earth’s surface and the ionosphere. These frequencies overlap with human brain rhythms (theta/alpha). In folklore and esoteric traditions, the “voice of the sky” or “music of the spheres” often refers to these natural resonances that seem to bypass language and strike directly at perception
This book has inspired me, and this review is another chapter.