daily tous les jours attunes human voices to forest ecologies

daily tous les jours lets human voices seep into the forest floor

Deep in the coastal Douglas-fir forest of Hornby Island, home to the rarest and most fragile ecosystems in Canada, art and design studio Daily tous les jours installs Forest Mixer, an artwork that turns spoken messages into evolving harmonies, vibrations, and finally a kind of sonic mulch. Conceived by founders Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat as an encounter with the living systems of the forest, the piece translates human presence into an acoustic cycle of growth and decay, echoing how trees, soil, and fungi exchange information beneath the forest floor.

Visitors begin at a low-set microphone, intentionally positioned for accessibility, where they release short spoken messages into the installation. These phrases stretch into harmonies, then slowly turn into crumbling, mulch-like sounds. In the final stage, low-frequency pulses can be felt as vibrations through a platform by sitting, standing, lying down, or simply touching it with a hand.

As participants move along soft mulch pathways, the work positions their bodies inside the sensory field of the forest, composed of the scents of cedar and spruce, the crackle of needles, and the chorus of tree frogs, sea lions, owls, finches, and woodpeckers.

all images by Ramble Films, Olivier Blouin and Étienne Lacelle

a ritual of sound, care, and ecological attention in canada

Installed among towering red cedars and Sitka spruce, Forest Mixer operates as a playful experiment that releases a voice, watches it transform, and feels it dissolve into vibration. It creates space for catharsis and curiosity, grounding participants in the material logic of the forest.

The installation extends Daily tous les jours’ fifteen-year exploration of shared public experience into the realm of interspecies connection. After previous collaborations with biologist Luc-Alain Giraldeau and research into cooperative behaviors, the studio began looking at the forest as an active collaborator. Preliminary studies suggesting that soil organisms and fungi may respond to sound and vibration became an unexpected point of departure.

The work is an attempt to shape a sensory system that mirrors the cycles of communication, renewal, and decay of the forest. As the Montreal-based studio notes, ‘Forests, in their constant flux, remind us that what we experience today may not be there tomorrow. They show us how life thrives in chorus.’

Daily tous les jours installs Forest Mixer deep in the coastal Douglas-fir forest of Hornby Island