Transducing and Translating the Signals

If you haven’t already read Hilary Van Welter’s brilliant article, The Art and Science of Signal Spotting, I recommend it as a companion to what’s below. Here, we’ll continue in the vein of picking up signals, and take a spin through the dial to highlight shared frequencies around what’s been buzzing about in the ether. 

Ariel Brooks and I are both “Interstitionaries”– people who work between spaces and places stitching together ideas, communities and possibilities where they are most ready to connect. Like the interstitium (our body’s own organ system that our practice is named after) when we’re in kinetic motion,  an electrical impulse gets generated. In the body, it’s called piezoelectric energy: an electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials in response to mechanical stress, that is amplified and spread when it comes into contact with other conductive material. To keep on with this metaphor, in the spaces we’re working in, Ariel and I experience it as a knowing buzz in the brain and a swell in the heart when we come across kindred spirits, concepts, and work being done that’s in alignment. It’s a sense of “getting to ‘we’ astonishingly quickly.” (With gratitude to Katya Fels Smyth of the Full Frame Institute for this phrase.)

We’ve been thinking a lot lately about how signals actually work—not just in our own Interstitionary experience, but in the natural world that gave us our name and of which all of us are a part. This signal-spotting work that Coralus members are tuning into brought me back to a June 2024 episode of On Being with Krista Tippett about nature’s wisdom for humanity. In it, Krista interviews biologist and biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus, who offers us a valuable extension of what comes next once the signals emanate out from their source.

She describes communication in nature as a three-part circuit: there’s the signal, then the transduction of that signal into meaning, and finally (crucially) the response or action that follows. Without that third step, she says, it isn’t really communication at all; it’s just a signal that ricochets into nowhere. Think of the lone bird call that goes without response. But when communication does happen, whole ecosystems can catalyze action, and quickly. Think of the redwood tree that detects a caterpillar and within minutes sends volatile chemical messages rippling through the entire forest, which in turn changes the chemistry of every needle around it. That’s the full circuit: signal, transduction, response.

Stepping into the space we’re in—creating the conditions for the future to emerge—all starts with sending and receiving signals. We need to attune ourselves to the often subtle and sometimes pot-clangingly loud information that surrounds us, and can truly change us if our attentional aperture is open. 

On a March full moon call with the Coralus community, strong signals were coming through from many directions, all pointing to a more relational, connective and feminine future that’s verging and emerging. Step two: transducing the information to make meaning of those signals was starting to take place as people had eureka moments and shared them aloud. Some members were even driven toward action–talking about how being in a space with others sensing the same thing was giving them permission and energy to move toward their intuitive knowing.  

Since diving deeper into the Coralus community, both Ariel and I have been amazed at not only our alignment with the direction this group is headed in, but how it’s mirroring other communities of practice and fields we’re part of. Depending on the shape of one’s days and demands on one’s time, there are only so many places we can show up and be truly present to witness the rhyming ideas and feel the tingle of recognition. Ariel and I count ourselves very lucky to be present in a variety of spaces these days: from the just transition economy, governance futures design, Indigenous practices and ritual, political violence prevention and peace, media and local journalism revival, rural organizing, and with edgewalkers who pick up signals through spirit, tarot, nature and dreams.

What’s emerging is a meta-signal, a recognition of the sheer number of people, spaces and networks who are also sensing what Coralus is sensing. Yes, there is a shared undercurrent of foreboding, collapse, and the real experience of fragility within the polycrisis. But there is also a shared spirit and energy moving toward better paths forward. Part of the work ahead is to recognize our brethren wherever they are situated, so we may build this future more quickly and also thoughtfully as the current paradigms most people are stuck in no longer work.

We’ve been in deep conversation, prayer and shared space (whether over Zoom or embodied in the flesh), as well as poring through trade publications, listening to podcasts, trading memes, and cross-pollinating frameworks from various groups. There is tremendous alignment starting to form, and we think you’ll agree as we condense some of our own signal spotting into the following translation guide.

This is not intended to be a polished, static tool, but rather a way to start opening up all of our frequency dials so we can hear the harmonics around us in spaces we may not be familiar with or part of. We hope this chart provokes a feeling of solidarity more than separation, and of kin and not competition. Our deep hunch is that we are going to need all the language and all the frameworks as each one offers invitations to different personalities and possibilities. 

An Invitation

Co-creation is messy and ideative! Engage with this table not as a “fixed source of truth” but as an invitation into dialogue. Start with a box or header that resonates and then follow your curiosity left, right, up or down from there. Would any of the language bridges help you deepen conversation with a collaborator who brings different life experiences? Or a family member rooted in a different logic system? What is sparked for you? We’d love to hear! hello@interstitia.net

	Spirit / Inner Life presence & repair	Living Systems / Nature life as teacher	Systems Change / Field-Building coherence & infrastructure	Social Enterprise / Impact relational proof points	Mainstream / Popular Culture connection & belonging
The word they use for relationship	Sacred container Indigenous ways of knowing / being Resonance Kinship	Nutrient pathway The living web Reciprocity Circulation Flow	Connective tissue Relational infrastructure Coherence Network Constellation	Capital in motion The field Trust-based ecosystem Relational power Mutual accountability	The neighborhood / community The fire / third places Belonging and connection Friendship Social infrastructure
What makes change legitimate here	Felt sense Embodied knowing Resonance across the field Presence before strategy	Nature’s 3.8B years of proof Evolutionary intelligence Life’s own principles Patterns that already work	Documented field shifts Coherence across silos Proximity is the practice Trust built over time Action catalyzed by relationship	Evidence that care outperforms extraction 95% repayment on 0% loans Retention and survival rates Proximity to lived experience	Personal testimony Peer-reviewed loneliness research Harvard 80-year study Structural arguments
How they name the crisis	Disconnection from self, land, and lineage Burnout in the tenders The dominant system’s composting	Seven of nine planetary boundaries crossed Circulation without reciprocity Extraction severing the web	Institutional erosion Fragmentation across the field Bridging vs. bonding Funding nodes, not the weave The stability window is closing	Relational work starved of resources Systems forcing unsustainable tradeoffs Loneliness as driver of extremism	The self-help trap Bowling Alone Loneliness epidemic Optimizing the wrong thing We’ve crossed the Rubicon
Opening phrase(speaking TO this audience)	“What would become possible if you felt genuinely held — not by an institution, but by a living web of people who knew you and called you by name? What inner work do you need to do to show up in a community with a generous presence so you can play an active role in that web?”	“What if the healthiest human systems worked the way coral reefs do — where each polyp is unremarkable alone, but together they build the most biodiverse structure on earth?”	“What if the connective tissue between your grantees was as important as the grantees themselves — and what if you could see it, tend it, and fund it?”	“What if inner and connective work wasn’t a soft add-on to your strategy — but the actual lever? And what if the community holding you through uncertainty was the infrastructure that made everything else possible?”	“Who are your ‘others’ — the people who see the general shape of what’s happening and are trying to respond seriously? Have you built enough shared language with them that when disruption hits, you’re jumping into response instead of starting from scratch?”
TRANSLATING ACROSS LENSES — READ ACROSS FROM YOUR STARTING POINT
FROM Spirit /Inner Life	YOUR LENS	“The body already knows what the mycelium knows — that health flows through connection, not separation.” The interstitium is an immune highway: when the mesh is strong, healing happens without being directed.	Translate: what you call “the field” is what systems change calls relational infrastructure. “The connective tissue is the strategy — and you’ve been tending it all along.”	Translate: inner work and collective work as lever for outer change — this community has the proof points. “What if the exhaustion you’re metabolizing is exactly the signal your funders need to hear?”	“The quality of our presence with each other is the intervention.” Translate: belonging is not a soft outcome — it’s the single best predictor of a meaningful life, according to the Harvard Study that measured this for 80 years.
FROM Living Systems /Nature	Translate: the interstitium is your living proof — a newly recognized organ that’s been there all along. “Life creates conditions conducive to life — and so do you.”	YOUR LENS	“Healthy ecosystems don’t thrive because the parts are strong — they thrive because the connective tissue is strong.” What you call nutrient flow, systems change calls field coherence.	“Coral polyps are unremarkable alone. Together they build the most biodiverse structure on earth.” Translate: 3.8 billion years of proof that reciprocity outperforms extraction — here are the repayment rates.	“What if the healthiest human systems worked the way forests do — where the oldest trees feed the youngest through underground networks?” Suzanne Simard’s research. It’s not a metaphor. It’s biology.
FROM Systems Change /Field-Building	Translate: what you call coherence, they call presence. What you fund as infrastructure, they call the web. “We can’t do relational work at an unrelational pace.”	“The connective tissue between organizations is a living system — and it responds to the same conditions as any ecosystem.” Translate: field fragmentation is habitat destruction.	YOUR LENS	Translate: the interstitium reset at Coralus is the clearest field demonstration of this theory in practice. “The connective tissue is the strategy — and here’s what happens to repayment rates when you tend it.”	“Finding the others, building shared mental models, so when disruption hits you’re jumping into response — not starting from scratch.” Translate: this is what systems change calls trust infrastructure.
FROM Social Enterprise /Impact	Translate: what your metrics call evolutionary rate, this community calls the quality of presence in the field. “The 95% repayment rate isn’t the point — it’s the signal that something else is happening.”	“We are not scaling up. We are scaling deep.“ Translate: Coralus runs on the same logic as a coral reef — the health of the whole depends on the health of the connections.	Translate: Coralus is the field demonstration systems change has been waiting for. “Inner work as lever for outer change — and here’s the data.”	YOUR LENS	“People don’t need more meetings. They need to be met.“ Translate: the loneliness epidemic is the market failure your model solves — and you have the proof.
FROM Mainstream /Popular Culture	Translate: what Tim Ferriss calls self-transcendence, this community has been practicing for decades. “The people around the fire — that’s what refuge is. That’s what tending the tenders makes possible.”	“When the mesh of our communities is strong, networks know what to do without being told.” Translate: social immunocompetence. Ants figured it out. We can too.	“The relationships we build now set the initial conditions for everything that follows.” Translate: what Hagens calls trust infrastructure, field-builders call connective tissue. Same thing, different room.	“Relationships are the payload — everything else is the bun.“ Translate: the Harvard Study ran for 80 years. Close relationships predict health, cognition, and survival. That’s your ROI.	YOUR LENS
Phrases that work in every room	“The quality of our presence with each other is the intervention.” “The connective tissue is the strategy.” “When the mesh of our communities is strong, networks know what to do without being told.” “We are not scaling up. We are scaling deep.” “Life creates conditions conducive to life.” “People don’t need more meetings. They need to be met.” “We can’t do relational work at an unrelational pace.” “This work has always happened — it just hasn’t been visible, funded, or named.” “Relationships are the payload — everything else is the bun.”

We’re curious how cataloguing parallel vocabularies can create more opportunities to communicate across spaces, networks and fields of practice and generate individual and collective action. The frequency is already there. What’s often missing is the transduction layer: the moment where someone finds the meaning beyond their familiar world from another space. 

One last note on communication: Benyus also notes that in the natural world, deception in signals is vanishingly rare because cheating the signal degrades the whole ecosystem’s ability to function. In a moment of profound disinformation fog, that’s a useful thing to hold. The work of honest signal-spotting and faithful translation is not incidental to building the future we’re oriented toward. It is the work. We’re grateful to be witnesses and participants in the containers which Coralus is holding integrity. 

We’d love to hear what’s coming through for you! Whether that’s adding to the chart, editing it or overall commentary. You can reach us at: hello@interstitia.net