On a pleasant December morning, Tarun Nayar was at a mangrove reserve in Mumbai, where he plugged his synthesizer into a thick leaf. The sound that emerged was hypnotic and otherworldly, blending a sense of the future with nostalgic echoes of 1980s synthwave. It felt like something right out of Stranger Things.
Nayar is not your traditional musician—he’s a fungi whisperer. By connecting cables from his custom-built modular synthesizers to mushrooms, fruits, and leaves, he transforms their natural bioelectric signals into captivating sounds. During his performances, he works with focused precision, adjusting the knobs and buttons to fine-tune the rhythmic and peculiar sounds that are created. Over the last five years, Nayar has jammed with myriad types of fungi, including trumpet-shaped chanterelles and the glorious, red-roofed fly agaric mushrooms. He has also collaborated with a giant ficus tree, clumps of bamboo, sword ferns, a pineapple, and even the odd-looking citrus fruit called Buddha’s Hand. “It’s an intoxicating feeling to be able to make all these crazy sounds and program really interesting melodies, many of which will probably be impossible to play on a traditional instrument,” he muses.
Music has always been central to Nayar’s life. Born to a Punjabi father and a Canadian mother, he was immersed in Indian classical music from an early age, particularly through his training in tabla, a type of hand drum. But for the past four years, the former biologist, who is based in Montreal, has been experimenting with what one may describe as plant music.
Nayar’s journey into this experimental soundscape began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was living on a tiny island north of Vancouver, surrounded by nature. That’s when he began “messing around” with flora. He recalls plugging a software synthesizer into a salmonberry bush. “All of a sudden, the synthesizer started playing a piano patch,” he says. “I could actually ‘listen’ to the salmonberry bush.” Nayar was immediately hooked by the idea of transforming biological data into music. “To me, it was the coolest thing ever,” he recalls. “I knew I would be spending the next 10 years of my life exploring this.”
In 2021, Nayar started posting videos of his “little experiments” on the internet under the stage name Modern Biology. While initially his videos on TikTok received only three to four views, slowly they gained momentum and worldwide attention, leading to tens of thousands of people appreciating his work. “To be honest, I was quite surprised that people were interested in this relatively niche practice. It really gave me a feeling of community during the pandemic when my bubble was quite small,” admits Nayar. Today, he has over 379,000 followers on Instagram alone.
To be clear, fruits, fungi, and trees don’t make music. They don’t even produce sounds that lie within the audible range of human hearing. But as Nayar explains, “almost every behavior in plants and fungi is mediated by electrical impulses, just like in humans. Every thought, every movement, every little cellular division is associated with an electrical activity. These signals or processes are all reflected in the conductivity of the organism’s body. All I’m doing is tapping into these fluctuating electrical fields and translating the electrical signals into musical notes.” Nayar sometimes enhances the biofeedback by layering subtle, ethereal sound effects that help to amplify the soundscape.
His interest in sound synthesis began several years before the pandemic, sparking a deep fascination that eventually led him to build his own analog synthesizers at home. He pursued courses focused on DIY synthesizers made out of breadboards—versatile plastic boards with perforated holes, designed for assembling electronic circuits by plugging in jumper cables. “It’s a way to rough out basic circuits,” he explains.
One of the first exercises in the online course involved the humble orange. “We had to use it in a circuit as a resistor,” Nayar recalls. “Everything has electrical resistance, but some materials are so resistant that current can’t even pass through them. Fruits and vegetables, however, are effective conductors, allowing electrical current to flow through them.” When Nayar squeezed the orange, he realized that its conductivity changed, and the sound changed with it. “The pitch of the oscillator went up or down depending on whether you were squeezing it or not,” he says, adding with a hint of amusement, “you can actually play the synthesizer just by squeezing the orange!”
From holding festivals in parks to conducting intimate gatherings at restaurants, Nayar has been gaining attention for his experimental music. His goal is to encourage people to reconnect with nature. “For the most part, as human beings we kind of forget that the world is alive,” he says.
At many of his performances, guests are invited to engage with the natural world by foraging for mushrooms and plants, which Nayar then links to his synthesizer. With headphones on, attendees can immerse themselves in the unique sounds produced by the fungi, whether they’re relaxing on the grass or swaying to the rhythm. Mumbai-based ecological designer Gautam Muralidharan, who has known Nayar since 2009, describes the experience as “trippy.” “It’s like listening to the planet,” Muralidharan explains. “There’s something profound about connecting with the underground—the hidden, mysterious part of the Earth that we rarely interact with. What fascinates me is how Tarun blends technology, nature, and music in a way that’s both communicative and accessible to people.”
As part of the Conscious Collective, an initiative created by the Godrej Design Lab that explores green design solutions in India, Nayar spent a few days experimenting with flora at a mangrove reserve in Mumbai in December 2024. “There were a couple of local fishermen over there, and when I encouraged them to listen to the mangroves, their response was very moving. One of them said that he felt the mangroves were asking him to ‘keep on watching over them, to keep taking care of them’,” recalls Nayar.
Do the sounds shift in tone or feedback depending on the kind of plant? “Essentially, there is a large amount of variability even within the same organism over the course of a day,” responds Nayar. “As plants orient towards the sun, move water through their tissues, and photosynthesize, their conductivity changes dramatically. What I’ve noticed, anecdotally, is that plants tend to be a little more consistent in how their bioelectric fields change. Fungi, on the other hand, are unpredictable. I think it’s within the realm of possibility that different species or groups of organisms have different bioelectric ‘signatures’ but this science is quite new, and we may be years and years away from knowing that for certain.”
Nayar isn’t stopping with sound alone. He’s also exploring multisensory experiences, which led him to the food world. A couple of years ago, Portuguese chef Rui Mota learned about Nayar’s work and encouraged him to explore the visceral relationship between taste and sound. Intrigued, Nayar delved into scientific research and found that high frequencies can bring out sweeter flavors in food, while lower frequencies accentuate bitterness. He began hosting experimental events in San Diego, Salt Spring Island, and Los Angeles. “That’s when I witnessed how people could truly feel in their bodies how sound changes taste,” he explains.
The first major iteration of an immersive dinner came in 2024 at Burdock & Co, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Vancouver. Nayar plugged the ingredients into his synthesizer, and dinner guests wore silent disco headsets so they could “hear” their lavish four-course meal as they were eating it. “We tried the food without the music and then with the music,” he explains. “And the guests used an app, which allowed them to give numerical scores to the sweetness and bitterness of food, before and after we heard the music. The experience was really interesting because we confirmed the scientific evidence that tastes change in certain ways when certain sounds are experienced.” The biggest takeaway for Nayar was how meditative the dining experience became, offering diners a profound somatic connection with their meal through sound. One of the guests, Eli Wener noted, “The meal was exceptional, but tasting the sound elevated the food beyond anything I’ve ever experienced before. You really have to live it to believe it.”
Modern Biology stemmed from Nayar’s quest to understand what lies at the root of many people’s disconnect with the natural world. “I realized that we have lost our connection to our homes, to our land,” he notes. “As human beings, can we truly feel like we belong? Can we reconnect with the fact that our bodies are made of earth, our blood is made of water, and our lungs are filled with the exhalation of plants? Because when we’re in a state of connection, we won’t make destructive decisions. We won’t cut down virgin rainforests and we won’t hurt each other. We’ll realize that we’re all connected, just like the mycelium beneath the ground.”
