Echo(...)es of the Dolphin House: an aliened history of planetary cognition

In 1960, the research for extra-terrestrial and interspecies communication were associated with the conquest of two foreign territories: the cosmos and the ocean. Back then, the US neuroscientist John Lilly considered the dolphin as the first alien intelligence to communicate with. In 1959, he founded the Dolphin House, in the US Virgin Islands. This villa on the seashore has been turned into a laboratory allowing inter-species cohabitation. Margaret Howe lived with Peter the Dolphin in this semi-immersed space, in order to teach him English.

Recalling past voices of the Dolphin House, the research studies the role of non-human cognition and their integration into past and contemporary cybernetic systems. By focusing on how environments like the Dolphin House reveal the interplay between human and non-human cognition, gender, labor, and technology, it examines the historical and epistemological evolution of cybernetics. From its military-industrial origins to its relational and environmental emergence (Hayles, 2022), the study seeks to track the emergence of an alien emergence of planetary cognition; by using archive studies, mapping practices and artistic practices.