Imagine ambling through a forest surrounded by lush foliage and spotting mushrooms along the trail. For some, it’s a typical hike. For Tarun Nayar, it’s an ensemble of untapped biological instruments. Nayar, a former marine biologist-turned-musician under the stage name Modern Biology, plugs into the natural world and expresses its whispers as music.
Although he is passionate about biology, having worked at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Center, Nayar has been a musician all his life—formally trained in Indian classical music and joining various bands. Around 2020, he became fascinated with modular synthesizers and using biological organisms in musical compositions. He recalled, “I was taking courses during the pandemic on building simple audio circuits. Other people were making sourdough.”
Plants can produce sounds, which have been recorded and amplified by researchers. But Nayar captures a different aspect. He creates music by placing electrodes on plants or fungi to measure their bioelectricity, converting the electrical resistance readings into notes and rhythms on a synthesizer. When he composes music, he noted, “It’s very in the moment. It's taking inspiration from jazz, ambient music, and Indian classical, all of which can be heavily improvised.”
Nayar uses various plants and mushrooms to craft his music.
Hannah Paye
Much of his work involves field recordings, obtained while trekking through the Pacific Northwest rainforest to hiking to wildflowers in Banff, Canada. “This is really about feeling a connection to the natural world, remembering that the world is alive, and then expressing that.”
However, not every plant or fungus behaves as expected. He recalled once discovering a patch of amanita mushrooms on a hike on the Northern Gulf Islands in British Columbia. After returning to his car and hauling his equipment back in a wheelbarrow, he connected the electrodes—only to get no signal. Another time, he tried plugging into cedar needles but had to scrape off their waxy coating just to make a viable connection.
In addition to creating albums and performing live shows, Nayar collaborated with Instruō Specialist Synthesizers to develop the Pocket Scion, a portable device released in August 2025. It captures the changing electrical properties in nature, enabling anyone to create their own musical compositions.
“We’re capturing meaningful biology, as well as allowing people to make art like this,” Nayar said. “This combination of art and science is really the way forward…I think now more than ever, the public needs to have a stake in all of this work to believe in it and continue to support science.”
