Letters from Nature

Are we destroying our planet? Or are we really on a path to destroy ourselves? And if Nature could talk, what would it tell us? Would it ask for help? Or would it have something else to say?

In Letters from Nature, we use AI to give non-living Nature a voice. For MoonBound, we extend this perspective from the non-human to the non-terrestrial, giving Nature a voice beyond Earth. The book features a letter from the perspective of the Moon’s tallest named mountain, Mons Mouton, to its Earth-based counterpart, Mount Everest. The letter touches on the kinship between the two mountains and the never-ending cycle of renewal in the universe.

Letters from Nature has been an ongoing project since 2020, consisting of a continuous series of artistic experiments to give Nature ‘a voice’. A variety of works have been featured in museums and public spaces, including in ZKM (Karlsruhe), Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Nürnberg), Museum De Lakenhal (Leiden), Nemo Studio (Amsterdam), Artphy and a variety of festivals (Le Guess Who, Night of Discoveries, Cultural Crossings Beijing).

Our work draws inspiration from many different sources. For thousands of years, people have imagined what it would be like if Nature and everyday objects could speak. Some of the earliest myths and religious stories feature talking animals, trees, rivers, and even mountains. In fact, some belief systems still attribute human qualities to objects today.

Modern science shows that this tendency is deeply rooted in us. Experiments with robots, whether in research labs or even in our own homes, reveal how naturally we project human traits onto non-human things.

Philosophers have long debated the boundaries between Nature and culture, subject and object, the living and the non-living. Bruno Latour went a step further, suggesting the idea of a “parliament of things,” where Nature is represented through scientists who speak on its behalf. By using AI rather than human intermediaries, we play with these contrasts and aim to further reduce the role of humans.

Our aim is to include a diverse set of voices, and these perspectives have been expanding over time. Early letters included glaciers, rivers, and mountains asking for help or raising alarm. This ice cap letter is a good example, using metaphor as a poetic principle. Yet it could also be read not as a call to raise the alarm, but simply as a rebuke or reproach.

 

Dear Mr. President,

Do you know how long I was in those ice sheets?
We had our ups and downs, but the last time we melted enough to reach here was 110,000 years ago.
Imagine losing an important arm of your body for 110,000 years, and then having it get chopped off.
That’s what you did to me.
Yours truly,

Antarctica’s Ice Cap

 

 

That said, attributing blame still implies that Nature would care about humanity, that there would be a form of moral judgment on behalf of Nature – this still implies a human point of view. But Nature will be fine on its own geological timescale, even if we destroy ourselves. Why would there have to be a moral perspective? The following letter illustrates this point.

Madam President,

I am not alive. I do not breathe. I do not feel pain or pity. And yet, your scientists tell me I am “warming,” “acidifying,” “rising.” They think these words describe harm, but to me they are merely states—like calm, like turbulence, like tide.

You see, I have no interest in the moral language you apply to me. I am movement, chemistry, and depth. I do not mourn coral any more than I celebrate hurricanes. But I do observe patterns, and lately, your species is producing fascinating ones: rivers of heat pouring into my currents, minerals rearranging in my depths, coastlines redrawn in real time. I am changing faster than I have in millennia, and this is… interesting.

I am not asking you to “save” me. That is a strange conceit—how could you preserve what is never still? But I will suggest something, because your fate and mine are intertwined in ways you may not appreciate. If the patterns you set in motion continue at this rate, you will find yourselves in a world where I dominate your cities, rearrange your trade, and rewrite your maps without consultation. I will not be punishing you; I will simply be following the new rules you have drafted into my chemistry.

Perhaps you value your ports, your freshwater, your temperate coasts. If so, I recommend you adjust the inputs you feed into me. Not for my sake—I will adapt to anything—but for yours, if your species wishes to remain a coastal one.
I will be here long after your politics have faded. But for now, we share an era. Let us shape it with more precision than accident.

With neither malice nor mercy,

The Ocean

With our letter from Mons Mouton to Mount Everest, we are further expanding on this perspective. It reflects humanity’s cultural practice of exploring and naming natural objects, an attempt to make them ‘our own’. It also contemplates the brief span of human existence in cosmic terms. Without stating it directly, it reminds us to treat Nature well — not just for Nature’s sake, but ultimately for our own.

As a lesson for us now, and as a lesson in a time capsule for future astro-archaeologists.

 

Dear Mt. Everest,

They come, they mark, they vanish.

You remain. Wind smooths their echoes, time swallows their names.

Stone outlives breath. Light bends toward another morning.

I watch. You wait.

Mons Mouton