Interspecies was founded and led by conceptual artist and environmentalist Jim Nollman. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1947, Nollman received an undergraduate degree in English Literature from Tufts University, where he also composed incidental music for theater. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1970, Nollman became involved with the post-Cage avant-garde, producing experimental radio pieces for the legendary KPFA station in Berkeley, California. These pieces would become his first experiments with interspecies collaboration, famously including an acapella rendition of the folk song “Frog Went a Courtin’” accompanied by 300 turkeys, as well as pieces featuring kangaroo rats in Death Valley, California and wolves north of Reno, Nevada.

By 1975, Nollman was living in Bolinas, California where he received a grant from the newly-founded California Arts Commission to build a buoyant drum with a seat and outriggers to interact with several different cetacean species in the wild. It is here in Bolinas as well that Nollman begins his career as an author, penning articles for the CoEvolution Quarterly (a subsidiary journal of the Whole Earth Catalog) documenting his experiences of playing music with animals. Through this work, Nollman develops a reputation for his interspecies endeavors and in 1977 is invited by a fledgling Greenpeace to participate in a project combatting the brutal dolphin drive fishing practices on Iki Island, Japan – a practice later made famous by the 2009 documentary "The Cove". During his time in Japan, Nollman developed early prototypes for electronic music systems designed to protect the dolphins from local fisherman, creating acoustic "fences" around fishing boats with audio signals amplified underwater.

Interspecies Communication, Inc. was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in late 1979 as means to formalize this work, develop community around a shared artistic vision, and support the artists, writers, and philosophers exploring new approaches to environmental art, eco-philosophy, and other works demonstrating novel means of communicating with nature. The first issue of the Interspecies’ Newsletter - a physical missive sent out to all Interspecies Communication members and donors - was written and published by member Susanna Scanlon in early 1980, documenting Nollman’s eco-protest and technological work at Iki Island. Newsletters were issued intermittently for several years, becoming a quarterly publication from 1983-1987 under the editorial leadership of Sandra Wilson, and from 1988-2005 with Nollman as editor and printing provided by Marshall Davis.

The Interspecies Newsletter proved to be a very successful tool for developing an active international membership. Nollman provided the lion’s share of the writing, with many articles eventually being re-formatted as essays in other publications such as Utne Reader, Orion Magazine and New Age Journal, as well as his own books published by Bantam Press, Henry Holt Publishing, and the Sierra Club Press. Additional newsletter contributors include Paul Watson formerly of Sea Shepherd, Animal Rights advocates Marc Bekoff and Ben White, Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler, Mike Cohen of Project NatureConnect, and artist Daniel Dancer.

The multifaceted projects of Interspecies Communication were funded by the generous donations from readers of the newsletter in addition to support from various donors, grants, and media appearances. Projects include the Human/Dolphin Foundation, a collaboration with John and Toni Lilly in Careyes, Mexico; the Orca Project an annual expedition to the Johnstone Strait in Canada to record musical interactions with wild orcas; development of custom electronics and recording equipment for in-situ recordings of animals and environment with engineers Richard Ferarro, Mike Sofen, and Mark Fischer; collaborative efforts with the indigenous Aborigines of Lake Tyers, Australia to rescue a stranded dolphin community; using music and sound to help free gray whales caught in the Barrow Strait, Alaska; developing longterm communication programs with beluga whale populations in the Arctic Circle; collaborating with writer and artist Micky Remann on the development and implementation of underwater musical performances; as well as giving talks, leading seminars, and exhibiting work on interspecies communication internationally.

Interspecies Communication - renamed simply interspecies.com at the dawning of the Internet Age - remained vigorously active, with members and volunteers from around the world, until its dissolution in 2005. During its tenure, the organization remained unique. With a formal research program dedicated to interfacing with animals, plants and the non-living environment through music, art and ceremony, Interspecies was in many ways ahead of its time artistically, scientifically, and spiritually, while simultaneously highlighting and honoring traditional relationships between humans and the natural world as expressed by indigenous peoples around the globe. This interdependent connection seems especially pertinent in our current moment, as we navigate an environmental crisis that demands a fundamental re-consideration of our species with and within the fabric of Nature.

"The world itself can only be perceived as a unity upon which we all live and die, grow and collaborate."

The large part of Interspecies cultural production was text-based, from firsthand reportage of on-going projects, to personal essays, poetry, and fiction. These works were published primarily in a quarterly newsletter and have also appeared in numerous published anthologies and publications internationally.

The entire collection of the physical newsletters are made available here for scholarship, education, and research purposes.

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Interspecies musical output includes techno, field recordings, collaborations with turkeys, wolves, and tropical birds, underwater music, old time mandolin, and songs.

Recordings have been issued with various labels around the world including Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Other Minds, and Rural Situationism, as well as numerous compilations and self-released collections.

As far back as Genesis, western Man has nearly always depicted the animals as something less than human; placed upon the Earth for man's utility and enjoyment. But what was, at best, a dubious ethic for the ancients; as of late, with the advent of overpopulation and technological proliferation, become our very undoing. We humans are a species in control of our environment; yet seriously out of sync with the currents of the Natural Order. Lately we have been directly responsible for sending species after species into the oblivion of extinction, without a clue about how to halt the descending spiral.

Over the past twenty years, as the environmental movement gained steam, many of us have become quite aware that something drastic must be done. Yet all too often the activities of the various organizations flying the environmental banner seem like so many Dutch boys with a finger in the dike as water pours over him from above. Short-term animal saving campaigns certainly postpone the slaughters of the moment, but all too often offer no long- term solutions or even much hope. They purvey gloom. Certainly we need to continue such campaigns; after all they do save particular species during a period of crisis. But concomitantly, we need to develop all-encompassing educational tools which will effectively alter Mankind's attitude towards the animals. We need a universal Ethic, and we need it now; so that the next generations may replenish the world of their forebears.

Perhaps the most farsighted and accurate environmental Ethic is that known as Interdependence. Simply defined: all of the species, resources, and functions of the Earth aid and abet the growth and continuity of all the rest. Life on Earth is thus a complex web of interdependent causes and effects. Poison the insects and you kill the fish, the soil , and the predatory birds. Eventually, giVen enough time, Man himself, succumbs. That is the bad news of Interdependence. But there is also much good news.

Since all the creatures are interdependent with us as well as with one another, we must begin to meet and acknowledge them with a bit more dignity than humanity has ever yet considered. Within this worldview, Man is no longer the crown of creation – nature itself is the crown. Likewise, eVery creature possesses an independent intelligence separate from, yet totally integrated with human intelligence. The world itself can only be perceived as a unity upon which we all live and die, grow and collaborate. Buckminster Fuller has rightly called it "Spaceship Earth".

If these ideas at first seem a bit overblown and even precious, remember that Interdependence is the very cornerstone of natural law. If this law can somehow be transmuted into a human societal ethic, it becomes an important tool for forever altering the destructive course of modern exploiting human society. Likewise, any activity which promotes the interdependent worldview demands serious consideration and promotion.

Interspecies Music as developed by Jim Nollman, clearly promotes an interdependent relationship with the creatures of planet Earth. Music is communication; certainly more universally understood than any single human language, and, arguably, as profound. Interspecies music expresses the clear and simple example of humans attempting to communicate directly with other living creatures. Like any music it communicates the energy exchange of harmony. And like any successful harmony, the exchange is sustained as long as the participants coexist in the here and now.

What this suggests in actual practice is that the human must first acknowledge the other animal as his or her equal. In many cases the human must sit with the animal as a student sits with a teacher. Interspecies music is certainly one of the most direct methods yet developed within the framework of human artistic endeavor, for expressing the crucial ethic of interdependence.