Public 59 Summer 2019 Interspecies Communication

Editors: Meredith Tromble and Patricia Olynyk

Human and non-human lives are inextricably linked in a welter of being. The artists and scholars in this issue engage the comedies, tragedies, surprises, and satisfactions of interspecies communication, broadly defined. Energizing our connections with others through conscious communication seems irresistible to humans, as social primates. Likewise, non-human creatures enter the communicative exchange through vocalization, gesture, touch, and non-verbal cues. From art projects that imagine interspecies dialogues, to lab experiments that produce rhizomatic, non-hierarchical forms of knowledge, to attempts to connect with microbes or alien life, the works presented here enliven human understanding of interspecies discourse. Drawing on art, animal studies, anthropology, architecture, art history, bioethics, game studies, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, robotics, and technology studies, this special issue of PUBLIC considers the negotiation of information exchange among different forms of embodiment. Each contribution reveals a unique aspect of the aesthetic, social, and ethical dimensions of interspecies entwinements.