What practices can we use to develop our listening and sensorial abilities to be able to tune in to other Non-human intelligence and be open to witnessing those of which we’re not aware?

The environmental and ecological challenges we are facing today lack action from the public due to Psychological Distance, which makes it difficult for us to relate ourselves to the actual impacts of those problems. From the anthropocentric view, that humans are morally superior, to the Ecocentric view, that all living things have equal intrinsic value, we need a paradigm shift of value system and an alternative social and ecological narrative.

As Pierre Schaeffer said, “Sound is the vocabulary of nature”, we believe listening as the non-human will change our ecological impact on this planet. The cognitive potential of listening is huge and underexplored. Built upon Pierre Schaeffer’s theory of listening and the research of empathic computing, this Empathic Listening research, using immersive and wearable systems through perspective-taking game, aims to foster cognitive empathy towards animals through Trans-Sensory Listening (TSL) with non-human centered storytelling.

With science translated into narrative, BATOPIA, a bat-as-subject perspective taking game, investigates what it means to become another species with some distance from us on the phylogeny. Player with trans-sensory vision, trans-sensory listening from ultrasound will experience a bat’s foraging in urban areas affected by anthropogenic noise and light pollution. Completing foraging tasks with disturbances derived from actual environmental challenges, the player understands the bat as a subjective character, which opens people to a more engaged, empathic relationship to the non-human inhabitants of the ecosystem. BATOPIA provokes a transition in the relationship between nature and human toward respect and empathy to non-human beings, with the potential to mitigate some of the harms pervaded by Anthropocentrism.