Narrative & Inspiration

YoTerra grows from a specific experience: time spent in Villarrica, in the south of Chile, where the relationship between fungi, forest, sound, and territory is palpable in a way that is hard to articulate in language. The birds I heard there — their calls layered into the texture of the landscape — became the raw material for the project.

The project has two interconnected pieces. Funga Morpho uses generative computer graphics to simulate fungal growth and morphogenesis — the mathematical processes by which biological forms emerge from simple rules. The visuals are not illustrations of fungi; they are processes that are inspired by mycelium. The First Singing is a sound piece built around those bird recordings from Villarrica — Chucao, Queltehue, Fiofío, Rayadito, Bandurria, Martín Pescador — processed and composed in Ableton, drawing on psychoacoustics: the study of how sound shapes our senses.

The two pieces are connected, so the behavior of the visuals and the sound influence each other in real time.

Technical Detail

• —Funga Morpho is a WebGL2 agent-based simulation using GLSL ES 3.0 shaders: agent shaders control individual particle movement, simulation shaders update the trail map each frame, and decay/display shaders handle evaporation and final rendering. The main goal was using simple local rules to generate emergent behaviors.
• —The First Singing uses Python for field recording processing and psychoacoustic feature extraction — amplitude, dominant frequency, spectral centroid — from six bird species recorded in Villarrica, La Araucanía (Chucao, Queltehue, Fiofío, Rayadito, Bandurria, Martín Pescador) and the Voipir River. The sound design and composition were built in Ableton, where the bird recordings are layered, processed, and arranged into a piece that was built to replicate the poem structure.
• —The sound piece maps acoustic features to emotional stages drawn from a poem by Mapuche poet Elicura Chihuailaf, creating a structure where ecological data and emotional narrative are encoded in the same signal.

Learnings

• —First time working with natural sounds as compositional material. Using field recordings — rather than synthesized audio — grounds the piece in a specific place and time, but it also means the sound resists being shaped. The birds have their own rhythms and timbres; the composition has to work with that, not against it.
• —Mapping the emotional journey of a poem onto psychoacoustic parameters was harder than expected. The science can describe how certain frequencies and textures tend to affect arousal and valence — the Circumplex Model was a useful reference for thinking about those two axes — but it cannot prescribe which audio effect produces which emotion. At some point the framework runs out and the artistic decision takes over. The model is just a map.
• —First time working with GLSL. The possibilities open up considerably once visuals and audio are connected — parameters flow in both directions and the two systems start behaving like a single organism. The challenge is deciding what to couple tightly and what to leave free.

The First Singing

Elicura Chihuailaf

Para sanarte vine, me habló
el Árbol sagrado
Ve y recoge mis hojas, mis
semillas, me está diciendo
De todas partes vinieron
tus buenas Machi
mis buenos Machi
desde las cuatro Tierras,
desde las cuatro aguas
mediaremos, me están diciendo
sus poderes
en tus nervios, en tus huesos
en tus venas
¿O deseas acaso abandonar
a nuestra gente?
Elevaré mis rogativas, le digo
Ay, mis pensamientos se apartaron
de los apacibles ríos
de mi corazón:
Piedra Transparente será éste
por mí, dijiste
¡Oh! Genechen, envíame tu aliento
tu resollar de aire poderoso
Éste va a ser cantor, dijiste
entregándome el caballo Azul
de la palabra
Hasta la Tierra de Arriba llegará
en sus Sueños
confundiendo al mensajero de
sus enemigos
Me oirá cuando hable desde
la savia de las plantas
y de las flores. Así dijiste
Más yo quise olvidar el consejo
de las Ancianas
y de los Ancianos
por eso estoy enfermo ahora
Mis pensamientos se alejaron
de los apacibles Ríos
de tu Corazón

Mírame, estoy soñando que he
subido por tus hojas
La Cascada Azul de la mañana
vino a mojar mis labios
con sus aguas
Subí, subí con ellas, pero
me sujetó el murmullo
de los peces
Caminé luego sobre el aroma
de los bosques
Después bailé. En él estaba
colgado mi poder
Las buenas Visiones y los buenos
Sueños lo rodeaban
Lloré entonces, lloré, abrazado
por el espíritu de mi Canelo.

"To heal you I came," it spoke,
the Sacred Tree.
"Go, gather my leaves,
my seeds," it is saying to me.

From every place they came,
your good Machi,
my good Machi,
from the Four Lands,
from the Four Waters.
"We shall mediate," they are saying,
"our powers
through your nerves,
your bones,
your veins.

Or do you wish, perhaps,
to abandon our people?"

"I will lift my prayers," I tell it.
Ah—my thoughts have strayed
from the peaceful rivers
of my heart.

"This shall be a Transparent Stone
through me," you said.
Oh, Genechen, send me your breath,
your deep and mighty wind.

"This one will be a singer," you said,
placing in my hands
the Blue Horse of the Word.
To the Upper Land it shall travel
in its Dreams,
confusing the messenger
of its enemies.

It will hear me when I speak
from the sap of plants
and of flowers—so you said.

But I wished to forget
the counsel of the Elders,
of the Wise Women and Men.
That is why I am ill now—
my thoughts have wandered
far from the peaceful Rivers
of your Heart.

Look at me—
I am dreaming that I have climbed
through your leaves.
The Blue Waterfall of morning
came to wet my lips
with its waters.

I rose, I rose with them,
but the murmur of the fish
held me back.

Then I walked upon the fragrance
of the forests.
Afterward I danced—
in it hung my power.
Good Visions and good Dreams
surrounded it.

Then I wept, I wept,
embraced
by the spirit of my Canelo.