Audio adventures that ask different people: “Where do you find wonder?”

What is wonder? Where can we find it and how do we share it? Is it starting the day with a moment of mindfulness, or is it living closer to nature? Perhaps it’s a conversation with a stranger that shifts your perspective. Do we encounter it in grand spectacles, or in the smallest, most human moments? 

We’ve invited friends and collaborators from the Wonderfruit creative community to consider these questions, from musicians to architects to Buddhist teachers, each of different ages and from various backgrounds. Through the window of their lived experiences, we’re exploring a space to be curious, pay more attention and listen to the subtle magic hiding in plain sight.

“Pineapple eyes” is a well-known Thai proverb that refers to seeing from many viewpoints, just as a pineapple has eyes all over it. Inspired by this idiom, we want to find out if looking through the lenses of each person's perspective makes us more compassionate—and all the more capable of wonder.

Sometimes irreverent, sometimes contemplative, each episode speaks from the head and the heart, sharing the stories of the people we work with and how they connect to facets of Mind, Nature and Sound. These intimate interviews have helped us see the world a little differently and with greater equanimity, so we’d like to share them with you.

The Pineapple Eyes is a non-chronological, freeform podcast. Listen however, whenever you like.

Each person has their own pathway to wonder. Everyone involved in Wonderfruit, from monks to musicians, historians to environmentalists, has their own way of finding meaning in their lives. As we embark on this auditory journey, Pete invites us to take a moment to pay attention to each guest’s story, to connect with them through brief yet meaningful windows into their overlapping worlds.

Though we’ve come from different backgrounds—some of us are part of Team Wonderfruit, others with years of experience in audio production—we were drawn together by the same idea. Rather than create content for content’s sake, we wanted to strip it all back and experiment with a format that feels human. So, we’re muting our mics and amplifying the stories told by our friends, family, collaborators and community.

Japanese pianist and composer Yumiko keeps a picture on her phone of the view from her living room of the mountains. If you ask, she’ll describe how she often watches the fog sweep down over the mountains over the water. 

Away from the chaos of Tokyo, Yumiko has found inspiration in the world around her—in the birdsong, the rivers, the time that opens itself up away from pressing schedules. It’s where she’s found the foundations of her material. 

To Yumiko, the most wonderful music is the sounds made by nature. Many of her compositions and music are inspired by the natural world, based in the kankyō ongaku style of environmental ambient music. Through her compositions and performances, Yumiko attempts to enter a meditative state, becoming a medium where something else plays the music through her. It is a continuous creative process for Yumiko to step away from the ego and make space for the natural sounds that she loves.

In nature, there is no right beat to come in with the melody. There is an innate kind of patience practiced by animals, rivers, waves and plants. Birds don’t sing all the time. Sometimes the leaves are aflame in bright color, then bare again in the winter. 

Nature teaches Yumiko that things sometimes unfold in their own time, that wonder can be found in connecting to the five senses—to feel, rather than analyze things. To wait until the right moment comes, then to play. To be more mindful of her desires, to remember a forgotten sense of childlike playfulness and live more honestly.

In August 2025, Yumiko and James Greer of MSCTY_Studio and Sonic Minds performed their collaborative work, Music for Rest Rooms live in Bangkok. 

The transportive, meditative work is born of the desire to turn restrooms into a space where people can find rest, adding expressive piano, synths and samplings of river sounds and birdsong. The title is a tongue-in-cheek homage to Brian Eno, whose work had an enormous impact on Yumiko’s entry to ambient music. 

Appearing in The Fields in 2025 as a Sonic Minds sound installation, Music for Rest Rooms transforms these outdoor restrooms into places of actual rest.

Independent filmmaker and sound explorer Vincent Moon has been on the road for the better part of two decades. He’s circled the globe several times, collecting songs, stories and rituals as he travels and sharing them at the next village, town, gallery or festival in his “Live Cinémas”. 

In Episode 2 of the Pineapple Eyes Podcast, Vincent contemplates how he finds wonder in the everyday and explains his unique method for sharing it with the world.

In his “Live Cinéma” performances, Vincent mixes music and video together in an improvised overlay of footage. Each presentation is made live on the spot, with Vincent bent over dials and sifting through thousands of videos and recordings, alchemizing his recorded memories. 

“They’re like magical spells that I can really share at specific moments with people in the same room,” shares Vincent.

With his bags on his back, camera in hand, traveling solo to the most remote places and through bustling city centers, Vincent has made cinema into something of an extreme sport. From popular to sacred music, trance ceremonies to sound experiments, rituals to simple gatherings—he’s recorded over 1,300 films, all published in open-source.

This radical, nomadic lifestyle is part of the creative process. The other part? Human connection.

Through his research and in the ritual of each “Live Cinéma” performance, Vincent is forming a way to connect to people. Stepping out of Western, oversimplistic narratives, he tries to find as much time spent away from screens as possible, as much time in the physical reality as possible. 

There’s a kind of genuine curiosity that he brings to each interaction, grasping your hands as he says, “I have so much to ask you.”

And he really does have so much to ask. How do you live? Where does your wisdom come from? Are your traditions rooted in indigenous wisdom or is this a completely new invention? 

“There is not one possibility better than others,” Vincent shares. “Everything has its worth, as long as we are conscious of the need to be moving.” 

What makes it hard for us to move forward? Are we stuck in limited perspectives of the world? It can feel, at times, that it’s impossible to imagine a better future. If we’re feeling hopeless and hedged in, how do we break free from these cyclical thoughts? 

To find other strategies of resistance, imagination, community and society, Vincent believes in looking in other places—in the past, in other people. And it also helps to meet physically, to share wisdom. Perhaps then, we can find ways to regain that power and strength we had in the past and see a future full of wonder. 

Hear more about how Vincent Moon finds wonder in his extraordinary everyday in the Pineapple Eyes Podcast.

Vincent Moon was introduced to Wonderfruit by a mutual friend. He joined us in The Fields for our very first inaugural FieldChapters, performing live cinema for the residency’s small gathering. 

His performances have been presented in hundreds of venues and festivals around the world, including MoMA, the Barbican, the Humbold Forum, Zébulon and Breaking Convention.

How does musician and environmentalist Notep find wonder? In Episode 3 of the Pineapple Eyes Podcast, Notep (or Note Panayanggool) shares the many ways she finds peace, positivity and calm in a distracting and difficult world.

Whatever Notep exposes herself to first thing in the morning frames her entire day. Creating peace in the first ten minutes upon waking up makes a real change in her focus and the relationships she has with the people she interacts with. 

She believes that a few moments of meditation set to a frequency track can help completely reset the day. It can also help to listen to something that resonates with you. 

“Sound isn’t just noises,” says Notep, “but it’s vibrations.” 

And vibrations, she shares, impact us more than we think, even the vibrations we can’t hear. It’s important to pay attention to the frequencies that we surround ourselves with. For Notep, this also means surrounding yourself with the people you really resonate with and who bring the best out of you. In particular, 

“Find your tribe that matches your vibe,” quips Notep.

The soundscapes and sensory experiences created by Notep bridges voice and field recordings. For a Decade of Wonder, she’s collaborating with Sonic Minds—an initiative we started together with our friends at MSCTY_Studio looking for how sound connects the mind and nature. 

So, what aspect of nature feels most like a homecoming to Notep?

“Every time I feel overwhelmed or stressed or lost, I go into the water,” Notep reflects. “Just close your eyes and really just meditate in the water, that really calms me down.”

From swimming competitively as a child, to scuba diving, free diving and conservation work at Ko Tao in the Gulf of Thailand, her life has been intrinsically connected to water. Perhaps that is why Blue Mind Theory—this concept that people fall into a deeply meditative state when being in or near water—resonates so deeply with her. She believes the same can be done by listening to the sounds of water.

“Just being in nature is already so good,” Notep says. “Spiritually, mentally, physically, we are nature. So, it’s like coming home to ourselves, right?”