The Future is a forest, and other misunderstandings: on interspecies translation

If Wittgenstein’s Lion could speak, could an LLM understand it?

Presented for a Bergen Leonardo Laser talk on interspecies language, therolinguistics of the digital and feral, this talk unpacked the complexities, possibilities and troubles of communicating across species lines. Using Ursula Le Guin’s speculative framework of Therolinguistics to explore semiotics, linguistics, meaning-making and sharing it interrogates the inherent dangers of reaching for cultures and connection beyond the human while still lodged within anthropocentric habits.

The living world is matter manifesting as an architecture of articulation, woven from mycelial pulse, typhoons, bird song, coastlines and pheromones, each itself an articulation of something exceeding the limitations of human perception. How might we stretch our imaginations to allow for new modes of being and knowing, informed by the communication models of plant, animal, geologic and atmospheric worlds? What are some practical strategies for becoming cognoscente of other types of intelligence and consciousness?

Taking its title from new experiential future work Tree Tongue (Bertucci & Gawler 2026) this talk looks to play, failure and potential for human worlds to speak with, instead of for, multispecies others.