“We don’t get to see our data like this, and we don’t get to have that sort of impact… That’s what we need to be doing more, and what we’re not doing enough of. Our research stays within government, within policy, within science, and it doesn’t go out to the public enough. And it’s the public’s mind that we need to change.”
Jenna Lawson, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
‘Moth X Human’ — created by composer and violinist Ellie Wilson, in collaboration with Dr Jenna Lawson, the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and moths — is a sonic journey into the world as it comes alive after dark. Moth data collected by scientists at UKCEH has been sonified into immersive soundscapes, with each moth assigned a different sound. The ebb and flow of different species activity throughout the night is “performed” alongside acoustic instruments, field recordings, electronics, and visuals, creating a unique interspecies experience. ‘Moth X Human’ was commissioned by Oxford Contemporary Music with support from the UKCEH, and presented for the first time at PRS Foundation’s New Music Biennial — at the Southbank Centre in London, and in Bradford as part of its UK City of Culture celebrations; the live performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and is currently available to stream and download on NMC Recordings.
Ellie Wilson is a violinist and composer whose work melds contemporary classical, folk, field recordings and electronics. Her output ranges from live performances to immersive sound installations and draws on themes of psychogeography, nature, memories, history, and folklore. Ellie has written and performed music for Southbank Centre, Eavesdropping Festival, Kings Place, Shakespeare’s Globe, and Epping Forest, among others; her solo album Memory Islands was released on Bigo and Twigetti in 2023.
Following the performance of ‘Moth X Human’ at the Purcell Room in the Southbank Centre in July 2025, as part of PRS Foundation’s New Music Biennial, we sat down with Ellie Wilson and Jenna Lawson to discuss science-music collaboration, biodiversity decline, emotional reactions, translating data into music, and more…
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Zyggy/PRXLUDES: Hi Ellie, hi Jenna! Thanks so much for chatting with me today. We’re speaking following the phenomenal premiere of your piece ‘Moth X Human’, which I experienced at the Purcell Room of the Southbank Centre during this year’s New Music Biennial; Ellie, can you tell me a bit about how the collaboration came about?
Ellie Wilson: The way this all started was because I was on the Oxford Contemporary Music BOOM scheme — which is a scheme that they set up to give space and time for artist development. It came at a perfect time for me. I was a new mum, and I’d taken a couple of years out, and I wasn’t sure what I was doing… I’d gone from playing in bands [to] writing my own music, and I didn’t know where I was going to next. It really gave me a chance to explore my sound world, to develop my skills in Ableton — which enabled me to perform live, solo, for the first time. That’s a huge thing!
OCM are really good at trying to get you to push out of your comfort zone. They’re really keen on sound installations and location-based performances. One day, I came up with this idea; I mentioned it to the other artists on the BOOM scheme, and some of OCM, and they were like “that’s a really good idea — you need to run with it!” At that point, I had absolutely no idea how I was going to make this happen. I just wanted to do something that involved insects — not necessarily moths, at this stage — and their movement would create a piece of music. And someone at OCM knew someone at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology; and once I’d spoken to them — and realised they were creating these systems — I was like “oh, I can do something with that data!”
Zyggy: Jenna, how did you and the UKCEH first come across Ellie — and how did you both connect?
Jenna Lawson: It was originally all over email, I think! We told Ellie about what we were doing, and the type of hardware we were working with and the data it produced. We were looking for new ways of getting our data across to people. People are sick of numbers; I could throw so many numbers at people about declining biodiversity, but people stop listening to those sorts of things because they’re just hearing it so much. I think now is the time, with biodiversity especially… We need to find a way to make people care. I think the best way to do that is [to] engage people’s senses, because it does bring about that emotional response — that I think many people had on Saturday [at New Music Biennial]. Combining art with science is so vital right now, and this was an excellent way to do it.
Zyggy: ‘Moth X Human’ uses real-world data and research from moths — Jenna, it’d be lovely to hear about your role in collecting this data.
Jenna: Usually, data that’s collected on insects to study them is very invasive. It kills the insects you’re trying to study, and you can only work on small scales. So the hardware that we created allows us to put these automated monitoring systems out, all over the country — we have them all over the UK, and in around 25-30 different countries across the globe — and it allows us to monitor insects non-invasively, so we don’t have to hurt them or kill them. And it allows us to monitor across wide spatial and temporal scales, to really be able to study the effects of big issues we’re having right now: land use change, pesticide use, pollution, climate change.
We have these systems out recording all over the country, in very good habitats and very bad habitats — to look at the effects of human influence. And then we work with powerful AI algorithms that we’ve developed, to classify the insects; and that was the data that was given to Ellie in these spreadsheets. I think the original ones had hundreds of thousands of entries in them… -laughs-
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Zyggy: Ellie, what was your initial reaction to getting all of these numbers?
Ellie: It was quite overwhelming! I spent a fair few hours — quite a number of hours, I’d say — just trying to get my head round what each column meant. There was days and days of data from various locations that Jenna gave me. I’m quite used to working in Excel, so it wasn’t completely alien to me… But it was really [about] trying to find patterns. I was filtering the numbers, I was trying to find certain days where there was lots of activity, or particular species.
All the species names in the spreadsheets [were] all in Latin — so I was Googling the Latin names to work out what the “common” names of those moths were, because I was particularly looking for moths that I knew of. Species that are a bit more well known, like the hummingbird hawk moth, things like that. I wanted to see whether they appeared; I thought “oh, if I could get a few of those ones in, that would be really exciting, and give me something to play with when I’m creating the piece!”
After I’d looked at all this data, I then found a couple of days that were really full of activity. There was one day that I ended up sticking to — the 1st August last year [2024] — there was a huge spike in activity, and I said to Jenna “do you know why this is?”. The only thing we could work out was that it was a really hot period of the year; there had been a heatwave, and that potentially encouraged a lot more moth activity on that evening. That’s the data that I ended up using at the beginning of the piece.
I used data from a location in Wiltshire called Parsonage Down. It’s chalk grassland, there’s lots of insect activity, and there were loads of moths that evening. There were 80 species of moths, which I’ve heard is quite good — is that right, Jenna?
Jenna: Yes, that’s good.
Ellie: And so then I had to work out what I was going to do with that data. I had a bespoke device made for me in MaxMSP, by a guy that I’d met through the OCM Boom scheme — Tom Glendinning — who works at Ableton, and is a producer. I’d already determined I only needed two bits of data [from the spreadsheets]: I needed the species name, and I needed the timestamp — the time that the moth landed on the device. Then that device enabled me to assign different notes to the different species of moth. I was able to do that in MIDI in Ableton.
Zyggy: How did you end up translating that data into sound parameters? I understand you worked with Jay Chakravorty on some of the synth sounds…
Ellie: I’ve worked with Jay Chakravorty for a long time. We’ve been in various bands, and I play a lot of his music — as well as him playing with me. Jay has a lot of analogue synths, and he also has a great library of sounds on his computer. -laughs- So I [would] go and spend the day at Jay’s. We just spent a day buil[ding] a huge library of sounds for me to take away. At that point, I hadn’t decided what moth was getting what sound. I had absolutely no idea how it was going to end up sounding, because there was so much moth activity; if I had given them too many different sounds, or too many different notes, it could have been really discordant — and that wasn’t what I was going for. I wanted something that was going to be immersive, that was quite ambient [and] soundscape-y.
Once I got those sounds, then it was the fun bit: sitting down and attaching the sounds to the different species. The “showstopper moths”, as I like to call them — the elephant hawk moth, the brimstone moth, the burnished brass — because they don’t appear that often, I thought I’d give them some really hard-hitting notes that stood out in the piece. And then there were lots of micro moths — hundreds and hundreds of these micro moths that kept reappearing throughout the evening. If I had given them a prominent sound, it would have been overbearing; it would have been too much. So I gave them very subtle, soft pedal piano, that ripple[s] underneath the beginning. It was a combination of that thought process that enabled me to build the beginning of the piece. Once that was done, it was mixed: the moths were panned left and right, some were pushed forward, and some were brought back.
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Zyggy: That’s amazing. Jenna, I’m curious — did you have any idea about how any of your data would sound ahead of hearing the piece in full for the first time?
Jenna: Absolutely no idea. -laughs- We just left Ellie to work her magic! Once we’d given her the spreadsheets and explained a little bit about it, we had no idea how it would sound. That’s actually the first time, Ellie, [that] I’ve heard you say about how you’ve assigned the micro moths; which is such a clever way to do it. The micro moths — the smaller ones — there are so many of them, and they flit around — whereas the bigger ones move a lot slower. It’s a really interesting way to do it, based on their activity.
Ellie, how much was new to you as a composer in the process of creating ‘Moth X Human’?
Ellie: Pretty much every single thing I’ve done, in creating this, has been new. -laughs- I have never sonified data before, so that was new. I’ve definitely pushed my Ableton skills to the limit. I’m a string player — writing for strings is not new to me — [but] I’ve never written for trombone before.
I’ve never scored anything quite in the detail as I’ve had to do here. You’ve got the opening section, which is very free — almost aleatoric — where the moths have basically randomly created this music. How do you score that? I had to do it in some way, because Jay is playing synths and piano underneath it, so there needed to be a way of bringing that in. And then, of course, the instruments come in… The instruments weave in and out of the moth sounds — but the moths have randomly created these fragments of melody, that I’ve then been able to use in the “scored” section. The cello particularly repeats those little fragments; I got Louise McMonagle, the cellist, to tap on the body of the cello to imitate the sound of a moth being trapped in a lampshade. There was loads to think about; every stage of the process was a challenge that I had to overcome. But I did it! I’m so pleased with myself that I managed to achieve it. -laughs-
Zyggy: You also performed in the premiere — did you feel like there was any kind of process of embodiment, with you performing as part of the wider piece?
Ellie: I umm’ed and ahh’ed about it. I mean, I’ve always thought of myself primarily as a performer, as an artist, rather than as a composer — although now I’m flipping between the two — but I did umm and ahh about whether I was going to perform in it or not. But then I decided that it was probably the right thing to do; to position myself as the artist as well as the composer of the piece.
And what an absolute delight to play with some incredible musicians! I’ve worked with Freya Hicks before, and with Jay many times before, they were absolutely brilliant. I’d never played with Louise or Huw Evans before, and they are just amazing; they brought my music to life. Louise made that melody sing, and she soared up that cello to perfection!
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Zyggy: Jenna, can I ask what your first reaction was, when you were sitting in the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre? Particularly when you first heard the moths flittering away in the opening notes of the piece…
Jenna: We just thought it was amazing. The buildup was the most spectacular thing, for me. It started very quiet, it was all very subtle — it was nice to see the musicians playing, and the moths playing — but the most spectacular thing was the power of the music you [Ellie] were playing, when it was all the instruments coming in together with the background noise. A lot of people in the audience did say that was really emotional to hear, especially after you hear the explanation of what the moths are doing, and why they’re in so much trouble. I think people really felt that then.
Ellie: It’s worth saying we used two different datasets for this piece! The beginning is the site that is full of biodiversity — lots and lots of moth activity. And at the very end of the piece, we return to the moths, but we use different data from farmland, and they use pesticides; and [on] the same day as the beginning, it’s noticeable that there’s hardly any moth activity. There were 19 different species of moths in the same period of time. You can audibly hear the difference, you can hear it’s a lot more sparse — lots of little micro moths flittering around, but none of those “big hitters” as such. It was really important to show that in the music — the decline due to human impact.
When you realised exactly where the data came from, that ending was so hard-hitting. All that activity from the beginning just disappeared…
Jenna: And that’s what we can’t get across. We can’t do that. I can tell so many people “oh, there were 80 species here, and 19 species here”, and people think “oh, that’s sad” and that’s as far as it goes. But attaching music to it brought out that hard-hitting emotion for people. Made people actually realise “wow, this is a big problem.”
Ellie: It made people cry. -laughs- There [were] people that cried! I’m pleased that it had that emotional response. I don’t know whether I thought it would; I hoped it would have some impact, but I didn’t know it would resonate quite as well as it seems to have. The amount of people that have sent me messages — friends, family, people in the audience — where they’ve gone “I’m looking at moths in a different way”. Or: “A moth came into my bathroom, and normally I’d be like ‘get rid of this moth, it’s horrible!’ — and what I did was I stopped, and looked at it, and picked it up, and I cared for it and I let it outside. I didn’t squash it.” I love the fact that even if just a few people have a better understanding, or more of an appreciation for moths, then I kind of think “job done”. I’m pleased about that.
I’m an absolute fan of moths now. Whether I was at the very start… I mean, I liked them, but now I’m a bit obsessed. But I’m always like that — any project that I work on, I always immersive myself fully in the subject matter. I’m someone who has to have a really strong subject to work with. I can’t just come up with something and write a piece of music; it has to come from somewhere. I have to fully immersive myself in that world to create. Because that’s the bit I enjoy: I love the research, as much as making the music. I’ve learnt so much along the way.
Zyggy: I feel like translating something like data into an artistic medium really helps people understand that data, both on a physical and emotional level. Jenna, how did feeling that data, in an artistic setting, feel on your end?
Jenna: It was a dream come true for us. We don’t get to see our data like this, and we don’t get to have that sort of impact. The only impact we get to have, usually, is [to] talk to farmers, and talk to policy makers. We rarely get to work with the public in this way, and have an impact on the public. That’s what we need to be doing more, and what we’re not doing enough of. Our research stays within government, within policy, within science, and it doesn’t go out to the public enough. And it’s the public’s mind that we need to change. It’s the public that control whether moths are declining or increasing, because a lot of what we’re doing is based in our gardens. For us, it was fantastic to be able to get the message out to the public in this way, and see the science having such an impact.
Zyggy: I understand this, for sure. Ellie, did you feel the same way about being able to creatively harness Jenna’s data?
Ellie: It was really lovely for me — someone who is not a scientist — to be able to get into that data, and help spread that word, you know? It’s sort of a dream come true [as well], really. As I said to Jenna, if I started out again and not done a music degree, I think I would have quite liked Jenna’s job! But then she probably thinks the same about me… -laughs-
Jenna: I think it’s only recently we’re seeing this collaboration between art and science. I wish there was more funding put into it. This piece has proven exactly what those collaborations can do — it can take people who have no care, or understanding, for insects or moths, and turn them into people who really care about them and will do something to save them. When we were with the audience on Saturday [at the Purcell Room], they did ask “what can people do?” — and it was really nice to get [that] across to people.
Often, when you hear about biodiversity decline, you think “that’s really sad, but what can [I] do”; so it was really nice to be able to tell the public that you actually can do something. You can stop mowing your lawn so much, and leave a bit of your garden over to wildlife. And we need to change farming practices. 70% of our country is farmland, and most of it is so intensively that we’re killing all the insects. And the knock-on effect that has on bats and birds… It’s a whole ecosystem that we’re destroying when we lose things like moths. It’s great to get that across.
Zyggy: With the success of ‘Moth X Human’, are there any more collaborations like this in the pipeline for UKCEH as an organisation? Or have there been any discussions about these kinds of collaborations?
Jenna: Our comms team are working a lot right now on trying to do more of this. This came at a good time, where UKCEH are trying to take their research and put it out to the public even more. This is one of the first times we’ve done something like this with musicians and artists, and CEH would love to do more. We work on so many different areas of science, across so many areas of the world; and we have so much data that is just sitting there, waiting for artists to work with. It would be great if we could get together a page, or list, or what we have — and what people could potentially do with it.
We’ve been discussing with Ellie, we have these [data] systems all over the world. We have them in Costa Rica, Thailand, Anguilla, Japan; this data exists for many, many different regions. We’ve already had our partners in Costa Rica say that they’d love to do something similar. Maybe Ellie will be travelling around the world with us soon…
Ellie: The great thing is, the bespoke device that brings the data into Ableton — I can use any data that I want. For the piece that we heard on the weekend, that was a set piece of data; but I am already in discussions [with] other locations that want to perform the piece, but asked “could we use our data instead?” — and, of course, I can. There’s loads of different opportunities of way that this could sit: with live musicians, like at the weekend [of New Music Biennial], or it could be a standalone sound installation using the data. This is just the beginning, really! I definitely feel like I haven’t finished my moth journey yet.
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The BBC Radio 3 performance of ‘Moth X Human’ is currently available on NMC Recordings – stream and download at the following link:
Learn more about ‘Moth X Human’:
- https://www.elliewilsonmusic.co.uk/mothxhuman
- https://www.elliewilsonmusic.co.uk/news-1/2025/3/19/moth-x-human-telling-stories-with-data
Learn more about Ellie Wilson and her practice:
- https://www.elliewilsonmusic.co.uk/
- http://instagram.com/elliewilsonuk
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOY0riaFKGDx6gdPeABgmOQ/
- https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/ellie-wilson/1454734450
Learn more about Jenna Lawson and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology:
