How to listen to a forest

I was walking in Alice Holt Forest on England’s Surrey-Hampshire border when I stopped to listen. Despite there being nobody nearby, a slow “breathing” sound filled my ears. This was not a trick. An artwork was turning live forest data into sound, making the air feel like it was gently rising and falling. In that moment, “climate change” stopped being abstract and became something I could hear.

The piece I could hear is called Dendrophone by composer Peter Batchelor. It maps sunlight, humidity and carbon dioxide readings into a multichannel sound field in real time. Wetter air sounds “stickier”, drier air “crisper”, bright light introduces a fine hiss. When CO₂ uptake is high, you can hear longer, steadier “breaths”.

This is part of a soundscape installation called Sensing the Forest that has been produced by a cross‑disciplinary team at Queen Mary University of London, De Montfort University and the public agencies, Forest Research and Forestry England. The aim is straightforward: to help people make sense of forests and climate through listening, not screens.

Dendrophone captures three easy‑to‑tell textures from live data. Humidity is heard as a “dry/wet” sound; sunlight energy as a subtle hiss (more juddery when activity is high, smoother when calm); and carbon dioxide uptake as “breathing” that becomes longer and steadier when uptake is higher, shorter and more uneven when uptake is lower.

Played over several speakers around the site in the woods, these sounds blend with birds, wind and visitors’ footsteps so people can hear the forest’s state as it unfolds in real time.