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The composer and theorist John Cage wrote a piece of music titled Child of Tree in 1975. For this piece, a performer treats plants and plant-materials like percussion instruments. The performer flicks the needles of a cactus, which make noises that are amplified and played on speakers. The performer might also shake seed pods to make sounds or rub the scales of a pinecone together. The performer makes sounds using plant-stuff.

In his article, “Death and Performative Engagement in Child of Tree,” Anthony Gritten reflects on Child of Tree, taking on an ecologically sensitive perspective.

Gritten notes that when Child of Tree is performed indoors, very often a cactus has been “extracted from” its “natural habitat” (2024, p. 92). The cactus, now removed from nature, is subsequently transformed into an instrument (p. 93). We might call this the instrumentalization of nature. What happens to the cactus after the performance? Gritten reflects that it would be easy for a performer to treat the cactus much the same way that humans often use oil (p. 93). Oil is extracted from the earth, used, and then never thought of again. How often is a cactus discarded after its use in Child of Tree?

Does Child of Tree encourage its performer to treat the cactus as a mere means – as something that can be used to accomplish the goal of creating a performance? Does Child of Tree encourage its performer to treat the cactus as a mere means and not of as an end-in-itself – not as something with value independent of how it can be used (cf. Gritten, 2024, p. 92)?

The philosopher Martin Heidegger believed that when people view natural things, they often think about how they can use them to their own advantage. In particular, humans often view natural things in terms of how they can be incorporated in and used by technological devices. As Andrew Feenberg expressed in his piece “Critical Theory of Technology: An Overview,” “objects enter our experience only in so far as we notice their usefulness in the technological system” (2008, p. 32). Think again of the way we treat oil. Oil is that which moves our cars, our technology. In his work, “The Question Concerning Technology,” Heidegger notes that some people might also see a river and think of how it might be used to create hydroelectric power (1977, pp. 16).

In her piece “Recognizing our Place in the World,” Nin Kirkham worried that the more we view natural things as tools or as resources for our own use, the more we might be willing to exploit nature in ecologically destructive ways (2016, p. 107). Does Child of Tree run the risk of inadvertently helping us further develop this sort of problematic mindset?

Based in part on his reflections on Heidegger, Feenberg developed what he calls his “instrumentalization theory” of technology (2008, p. 33). As part of this theory, Feenberg describes natural things that are “torn out of their original context,” and he indicates that people sometimes ignore those properties of natural things that don’t make them useful to humans (p. 33). Again, think of oil, which is torn out of the earth, decoupled from its natural context, and viewed as something that can help move a car. Or, perhaps, think of the cactus that is decoupled from its natural context, combined with microphones and speakers, and is used as an instrument in Child of Tree.

We can have a bit of fun with the way we use the word “instrumentalization.” John Cage, with Child of Tree, calls for a performer to transform a cactus – a natural thing – into a musical instrument. This is a musical “instrumentalization” of nature. Meanwhile, the “instrumentalization” that Feenberg describes has nothing to do with music at all, and instead has to do with a specific way of viewing natural things in relation to their use in technological systems. Yet perhaps Child of Tree, through its musical instrumentalization of nature, might sometimes indirectly contribute to its audience even further developing a problematic way of viewing natural things in relation to technological systems.