This work presents an audio-visual exploration of death’s ecology, centered on two found carcasses: a deer, half-eaten and suspended by its antlers between the split trunks of a fallen tree, and a seal, washed ashore and later carried to the boundary of the same forest. Each carcass is enmeshed in interwoven life processes scavenging, predation, sexual rivalry, and progeneration offering a frame for decomposition as an active multi-species event.
Emerged from practice-based research on (re)wilding grieving/creative processes, Josh Wagner's work follows the methodology of walking, wandering and improvisation. The editing process employed rapid collage techniques that generated uncanny coincidences and highlighted the entanglement of process and chance. Sound design integrates bio-sonification from a Plantwave device, human improvisation, and drastically slowed forest samples (500–1000%). This invites listeners into a soundscape that gestures toward species-specific experiences of time. Birdsong, often too rapid for human cognition to track in real time, is dilated to simulate how a bird might perceive its own sonic environment. By shifting temporal scales amplifies sensory difference, offering a perspective on the multiplicity and exceptionality of agencies beyond the human.
