Some of my thoughts and ruminations on the subject of Why listen to animals? 

1. No one knows how some animals sense a natural disaster is coming. Perhaps they pick up subtle sounds or vibrations in the earth. Maybe animals respond to subterranean gases released prior to tectonic shifts, or react to changes in the Earth's electro-magnetic field. Animals of various species seem to sense in advance, in ways that is beyond current scientific understanding, through some kind of deep awareness what is to happen. Maybe if we were to listen to our own feet and trust our animal kin we might also learn about the earth without the need to mediate and fetish money—technology. 
2. The Murray Darling Depression Macroinvertebrates are a whole collection of bizarre and wonderful creatures that spend some or all of their lives in waterways. Some are soft and squishy, some have hard crusts on their bodies, and some carry a 'home' wherever they go. They look strange and fascinating. They live weird lives and many have disgusting habits, including their breathing organs in the same location as their anus. You find them in ponds, streams, estuaries and stormwater and irrigation drains. You may even find some in your swimming pool! Many are insects, like beetles, and nymphs that are juvenile flying insects. Some are tiny crabs and prawns. There are also snails, worms and maggots. Fish, frogs and birds depend on these spineless creatures for food, and are an important part of the food chain for aquatic ecosystems. Ecologists have found that there is a strong relationship between landscape disturbance and changes to the composition of aquatic flora and fauna communities. Some aquatic macroinvertebrates have been shown to be very sensitive to certain types of environmental change. This sensitivity can be helpful to scientists, researchers and landscape managers in identifying which water bodies are being impacted by land-use practices. Conversely, the same information can be used to identify catchments where land management may not be occurring in a sustainable way. Freshwater macro-invertebrate sampling can be a very useful tool when performing a bio-assessment of a site. Biological information can be combined with water quality data to strengthen our ability to assign a relative health ranking to sampling sites. Ongoing sampling at least twice a year will be very helpful in developing more robust stream health data, when carried out in conjunction with water quality monitoring. It will also assist in identifying environmental change over time. Waterbug Watch has adopted a easier way of sampling freshwater macro-invertebrates using an EPT Index as a scoring system that focuses on three macro-invertebrate orders known to have a significant number of sensitive members (many-not all). It is a simple metric, useful in rapid bio-assessment as it does not require identifying all taxa, yet still provides valuable information. A percentage value is established for a site from the number of sensitive taxa Ephemeroptera (mayfly), Plecoptera (stonefly), and Trichoptera (caddisfly) present in a sample, divided by the total number of taxa collected, this is then multiplied by 100. What does a healthy underwater ecosystem sound like? does the hydrophone hold a key to understanding Health though identifying key species through audio signatures. 
3. listening with your feet. As humans keep discovering, its all connected like the the fabric of our own bodies and there is no sense in isolating any one part due to its interconnection. It is about  connections at every level, between seemingly unrelated objects and even concepts and this is where we find some artfulness. This idea lingered with me during a residency in Nodar Portugal where I attempted interspecies communication using a device that engages my bio-electrical system. The portable Postcard Weevil with is its three-osc-ring-modulation setup and  includes two 'circuit-bent' additions of power starvation and body contacts. The attempts at interspecies relationships I engaged in, seen with hindsight, reflect a desire to communicate in a different language, albeit fairly naively. Yet my attempts callout to a thread of literature on ‘Bio-physical’ theories of Dr James Oschman that are considered on the margins by many despite its potential. "The Earth's surface is electrically charged and can push electrons up in your body. “ Dr. Oschman Dr. Oschman explains in Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis, and Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance, that energy is all around us, from the great vastness of the furthest reaches of the universe right down to the smallest observable particle. It makes everything manifest. It has been given many names, Chi, Ki and Prana. The study and understanding of this energy has captured man's fascination since the dawn of civilisation. Energy Medicine is the practice of medicine using energy or rather the flow of energy as a medium for healing.  It is based on the biophysics of the body whereas traditional medicine is, for the most part, based on biochemistry through the use of pharmaceuticals. Energy Medicine takes the perspective that energy is a vital, living, moving force that is integral to our health, wellness, and happiness.  Energy is the medicine, and energy is the patient.  Bio-resonance of humans and that of the earth are worth listening to on a deeply personal level and as citizens. Perhaps this may assist us a species to stop mutating and maiming the networks that support us. “The soul of man, with all the streams of pure living water, seems to dwell in the fascia of his body” Dr A.T. Still wrote in his third book The Philosophy and Mechanical Principles of Osteopathy, 1902. As the old maxim states 'Know thyself", and yet here we have the unsung hero of the human body; Fascia is the is connective tissue fibres, primarily collagen, that form sheets or bands beneath the skin to attach, stabilise, enclose, and separate all muscles and other internal organs. It is commonly argued what the function and form of fascia is and does but what is certain is that it is a vital conductor of electricity connecting our bodies wholly. It is influenced at every level by, “waves of mechanical vibration, moving through the living matrix, producing electrical fields and vice versa -  i.e. waves of electricity produce mechanical vibrations…” Dr James Oschman,  Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance, 2003 Anthony Magen is a Landscape Architect and Acoustic Ecologist navigating the ecotones of culture. This navigation is facilitated through the construction of the built environment in a professional capacity, through pedagogy, soundwalking as an active artistic practice and an ongoing commitment to the World and Australian Forums for Acoustic Ecology. Anthony Magen’s practice includes the presentation of neorealist abstractions in ‘live’ situations, small-scale interventions, audiovisual installations and photographic presentations facilitated throughout Australia.

Anthony Magen

Fernando do Campo

a voice from behind the great walls of brian

Georgina Criddle

Puritans, psychedelics and pigeons An avant-conversation with the descendants of Gods “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ~ God, Genesis 1:26 But what deems a humyn life more important than say, a Pigeon? While the discrimination towards our columbiform confederates is no doubt deeply rooted, one could argue that such a lack of respect could be instilled by the God-fearing Abrahamic puritans – rather than being exclusive to petty, albeit offensive, contemporary literature such as section 45E of the Environmental Protection Act (which prohibits the feeding of all birds outside Melbourne Town Hall). Even in informal media, an endless onslaught of objectively garbage talk-show television programs presented by the likes of James Corden, Jimmy Kimmel or even Oprah that simply fail to capture the genius of the Queens and Kings of the ether that have generously bestowed us with their presence. For far too long the contributions of the Pigeon have been eclipsed by humyn mediocrity. The Pigeon serves as a symbol, a messenger, both sacred and secular. Without discrediting any other animal of the winged variety, no other bird has had such close links with humyns, nor been useful to us in so many ways. Why must we squander this opportunity for symbiotic harmony? I will attempt to reconnect with these sacred scoundrels, the feathered friends of yesteryear, by providing a humyn voice for the Pigeons. I will achieve this by interviewing a small handful of the many Pigeons of Melbourne, documenting this in an Innovative Eco-Friendly Web 3.0 Hyper-Realistic Slideshow Extravaganza Rated PG13.

John-Joe Wilson

literature of place in the context of the coast and the Anthropocene

Kim Satchell

Cosmic coincidences lead to the meeting of Chileans Sarita Gálvez and Camila Marambio

Cosmic coincidences lead to the meeting of Chileans Sarita Gálvez and Camila Marambio in Melbourne. Their shared reverence for the ancestral flautón chino from the Andes Mountains lead to playful explorations of its unique dissonant sounds and thereafter to experimenting with atonal signing and other technologies of the spirit. Influenced by Chilean feminist poet Cecilia Vicuña, the now deceased poet Fidel Sepúlveda, the musical ensemble La Chimuchina and the chino bands from the townships of La Canela and Andacollo,  Las Chinas honours the ancestral tradition by enacting the principle of tearing each other apart.

Las Chinas

tuned wires, corrugated iron roofing, lengths of PVC pipe, birdseed

I will be creating a compositional sound piece which explores the sound of birds as they interact with purpose built instruments and structures.
I will construct a number of instruments using tuned wires, corrugated iron roofing and lengths of PVC pipe.
Using birdseed, I will attract wildlife to the site and make recordings with a variety of contact microphones.
These recordings will be made in my backyard, they will then be edited and processed in my home studio.
The final composition will be presented as a digital audio file no longer than 12 minutes in length.
The only technical requirements for this piece will be a digital audio playback device, with headphones. I’m hoping a chair can be provided in the gallery space so one can sit and listen to the piece in its entirety.
One printed photograph of the recording site will accompany the work.
15 copies of the piece will also be lathe cut to vinyl.

Louis Kennedy

the marginalisation of animals by humans, animals as they exist only as forms and recycled clichés

I will be creating an audio visual work, around 3-5 minutes in duration, to be displayed at West Space Gallery. The piece will explore the marginalisation of animals by humans, and will portray animals as they exist in the imagination and in pop culture, that is, minimised to a point that they exist only as forms and recycled clichés.

The video will feature imagery of plastic toy animals that will perform simple movements that are loosely associated with the specific animal. For example, horses race, dogs fight and cows jump over the moon. Humans will also be included along side animals. These movements will be clumsily acted out as if the toys were being played with by an invisible child. The accompanying soundtrack will take on a sardonic tone.

The piece will be looped and presented on a screen with headphones, which will be sourced from RMIT and myself. The link below leads to a youtube video of an early draft of my piece. Future versions will include a more evolving soundtrack and more video segments.

Alex Cahill

private investigator, amateur dancer, permaculture enthusiast, and sporadic writer

Camila Marambio is a private investigator, amateur dancer, permaculture enthusiast, and sporadic writer, but first and foremost, she is a curator and the founder/director of Ensayos, a nomadic interdisciplinary research program in Tierra del Fuego.  Since moving to Melbourne, in February 2016, she has started to play the traditional flautón chino from the Andes Mountains she so loves. This exploration into dissonant sounds and atonal signing is a source of boundless joy which she shares with her band mates Sarita Gálvez, they call themselves Las Chinas.

Camila Marambio is a private investigator, amateur dancer, permaculture enthusiast, and sporadic writer, but first and foremost, she is a curator and the founder/director of [Ensayos](https://ensayostierradelfuego.net), a nomadic interdisciplinary research program in Tierra del Fuego.

Camila Marambio

Unreliable Encounters in Jurong is a collaboration based on a field recording I made in the songbird aviary at Jurong Bird Park in Singapore. Using the idea of language as an open structure that continually produces change and renewal, I have invited Peter Knight to work with me and poetically improvise with this recording through exchange and reciprocity using a combination of voice, pre-recorded materials and electronically generated sounds. In the bird park the sign on the path to the aviary reads ‘The illegal capture of songbirds is the sole cause of the decline of many species in South East Asia.’  An appreciation of songbirds is deeply rooted in many South East Asian countries and with increasingly urbanised populations caging birds has become a popular answer for maintaining contact. It is the complex soaring songs of the birds that captivate and immerse listeners, yet the caged bird trade is decimating populations in the wild and the trade is on the increase. We seem to like listening to songbirds too much. The aviary is a rich and varied sonic experience for visitors, full of the voices of a wide variety of birds, and the soundscape in the aviary may seem relatively authentic to those of us unfamiliar with their songs or original sonic environments. In the park, the sounds of human activity mix with the birdsong. My presence is audible as I move around the space, bumping the recorder on occasion, reacting to the birds and asking the bird keeper questions. Other human voices are audible as visitors watch and listen to the birds. Two park keepers clean out the cages and feed the birds. About half way through the recording a muffled loud speaker makes an announcement and then a loud performance begins. As I move through the aviary I wonder about the impact of the park on the songs of the birds. Songbirds are vocal learners. It is only a small group of animals (that we know of) that learn their language from their parents, including bats, whales, dolphins, songbirds and ourselves. These species’ vocalisations are not innate but are learnt from their parents and other adults around them. I wonder how the birds sonically cope with the proximity of unlikely species in an artificial setting and whether they change their songs. Biophonies are all the sounds of living organisms in a particular habitat (Krause, 2013) but I am not familiar with the biophonies that these birds would inhabit in the wild so I can only speculate. How do they adapt their voices to locate their sonic niche in captivity? As survivors of their species their songs are unlikely to remain the same in the bird park. We know that songbirds develop accent and dialect according to geographical place, just as we do, and, also like us, there is no reason to think that these birds do not improvise with their vocalisations. How long might it take for a biophony specific to the aviary to develop? Days, months, years?   September 2016 Reference Krause, B. 2013. The Great Animal Orchestra. London;Profile Books, p68.

Catherine Clover and Peter Knight

6 of 1, Half a Dozen of the Other Animals constitute a large portion of the soundscapes humans occupy. This piece acts as an inquiry into the way humans perceive animal communication and the methods in which animals produce sound. I am interested in the ways in which human and animal speech can be compared and analysed through synthesis and presenting simultaneous sonic analogies.

Eugene Brockmuller

James Grant

the balance of power from; Animal > Human to Human > Animal**

The relationship between Humans and Animals has been a constant power struggle since the start of their respective existences. From the beginning, the Human has only been armed with basic intelligence, and limbs to support bipedal movement. The only natural defence mechanisms the Human has had to defend itself against the much bigger, and feared creatures that dominated land, water and the air for thousands of years. The Animal, however was armed with weapons and physical advantages. Such as; razor sharp teeth, talons or claws; the ability to fly, or breathe underwater; the poison to kill in minutes; or the speed and strength to rip a mere Human to pieces in an instance. Miraculously, the Human overcame its physical limitations, and succeeded to overthrow the Animal kingdom and conquer the world. Now, the Human sits atop of the food chain, thanks to its evolving development of technology. From the rock to the spear, the spear to the gun, the once feared and worshipped creatures are now the slaves of consumption, in the form of either food, or entertainment. Even the gun has become outdated, as the monitoring of the Animal can be reduced to data, that of 1s and 0s. The role of the Human is to simply program the computer responsible for autonomously harvesting the Animal. The land, water and air the Animal once ruled has been updated to support the needs of the Human. Through the collection of data in the form of audio and visual media, we will be representing this timeline, and the balance of power from; Animal > Human to Human > Animal\*\* The data will be re-animated to create a synthetic ecosystem, to create an audiovisual installation with speakers and a projector. \*\* > (greater than)  (Website)\[https://www.agdata.com.au/modules/livestock/] Riley Lockett is a sound artist and composer from Melbourne, Australia. His practice recreates memory environments through field recordings in historical sites. Riley also creates sound compositions for contemporary installation, film, performance and theatre.

James Utting-Webb and Riley Lockett

Joel Maripil is a traditional Mapuche singer or ülkantufe who have been singing, dancing and playing Mapuche musical instruments in the diverse musical practices linked to religious and non-religious activities held in traditional communities.

Joel Maripil is an indigenous Mapuche from Chile and a Werken – a cultural elder for the Kechukawin community. Joel is also the Musical Director of the Children’s Orchestra of the Mapuche town of Tirua (Orquesta Infantil Mapuche de Tirua).

Joel Maripil

What is an animal? By biological definition Homo sapien sits within the Kingdom Animalia, but in Berger’s essay he draws a distinction between the human and the animal, so if human is separate to animal then where does the edge between human and animal lie?
for Berger the distinction lies in human’s ability to use language, but does this mean that a Prairie Dog, that is able to vocally communicate to its fellows not only that a threat is approaching but also whether that threat is approaching by land or air, how immediate the threat is as well as being able to differentiate colour, is a human or an animal? or is a chimpanzee that has been taught to communicate through the use of sign language such as Nim Chimpsky an animal or a human?  What of babies? yet to develop language and the associated structuring of thought, are they yet to become human, and what of those in vegetative states and those with severe disability, does this definition of human make them less so? What also of our genetic forebears and relatives within the genus Homo, and possible future relatives born of genetic engineering?
By using the the voices of both human and non-human animals as source material I aim to create a sound work that explores the space between what is human and what is animal. I envisage this work as a 2 channel work that while not necessarily performed live is played in space rather than through headphones and would therefor sit better in the context of performance rather than as installation.

John Jenkin

Rob Thorne (Ngati Tumutumu) is a new and original voice in the evolving journey of Taonga Puoro. His debut album Whaia te Maramatanga (Rattle Records) is a deeply felt and highly concentrated conversation between the past and the present - a musical passage of identity and connection. Using modern loop technology and traditional Maori flutes and horns made from stone, bone, shell and wood, Rob creates a transcendent aural experience that touches the soul with timeless beauty. Every performance of "Whaia te Maramatanga" is a stunning and very personal exploration of the spiritual and healing qualities of an ancient practise.
&nbsp;

Rob Thorne

While modern science is organised according to a visual schema, the biologist Jacob von Uexküll famously describes organisms and their environments in musical terms.

UNDINE SELLBACH is an artist, philosopher and writer. She lectures in the Department of Media, Music and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University. Her work explores life, gender, instinct, ethics, ethology and performance. She is currently editing The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies (with Lynn Turner and Ron Broglio) and writing a book on the Entomological Imagination (with Stephen Loo). She is author of the children’s book The Floating Islands (2006).
STEPHEN LOO is Professor of Architecture and Director of CxI (Creative Exchange Institute) and ACIPA (Academy of Creative Industries and Performing Arts) at the University of Tasmania. His recent publications include Deleuze and Architecture with Hélène Frichot; essays on the relationship between insects, instincts and ethics in Angelaki and Parallax and a forthcoming book with Undine Sellbach; and an edited volume on Poetic Biopolitics with Peg Rawes and Tim Matthews.

Undine Sellbach & Stephen Loo

Electronic and acoustic sounds that help imagine the making of communal sonic rituals.

Bryan Phillips A.K.A. Galambo is a Chilean/Australian artist working in community arts, music and performance, using sound as a means to facilitate engagement with others. His practice has mainly been developed in Chile, but after completing his Masters in Community Cultural Development (VCA-2013) he has become involved in projects with artists from Timor-Leste, Indonesia and Australia. 

He has collaborated in works for Mapping Melbourne (2015), Gertrude Street Projection Festival (2014-2015-2016), FCACheartsJogja (2015), Flight Project (2013, Dili, Timor-Leste), Animatism Exhibition (2013, Dili, Timor-Leste) and Timor-Leste’s first public art festival, Arte Publiku (2014).

Lately he has been collaborating with Fayen d’ Evie in exhibitions [...] {...} […] (Gertrude Glasshouse-Melbourne 2016), ee//hm (Kadist-San Francisco 2016), From one body to another (Casula Powerhouse - Sydney 2017), and the John Fries Award (UNSW Galleries - Sydney 2017).

Bryan Phillips A.K.A. Galambo is a Chilean/Australian artist working in community arts, music and performance, using sound as a means to facilitate engagement with others. 

Bryan Phillips AKA Galambo

Bunna Lawrie

Recreation of extinct animal vocalisations

There are many animals that we will never hear the sound of. Ones that became extinct before the advent of recording technology will be forever silent. However, while we rely on archaeological evidence to know what a dinosaur sounded like, thanks to the written word there are some animals that we have a better approximation of. People heard what animals such as the Dodo, Thylacine and Quagga really sounded like and some of them wrote down their experiences. I shall be using these written accounts as a basis to recreate the vocalisations these creatures used to emit.
This is not a new idea, such a project has been attempted before, however we shall never know for sure how successful or not they have been – it is an exercise in futility. While on the face of it, this project may appear to be a comment on the ever-increasing rate of animal extinctions and the moral implications of de-extinction; it is more focused on the limitations of language as a tool to explain sensory, specifically auditory experiences.
We listen to animals because their language is so foreign from our own.
Practically, I want to create an app that will be loaded onto a tablet and placed in the gallery space, this app will also be available to download. It will contain primary sources describing the vocalisations made by these animals accompanied by my recreations of these sounds. These will be listened to through headphones.

Jack Prendergast

Because they Sound: Granulation as Reanimation

Jake Moore Phonism (2018) Installation, speakers, stands, black fabric, audio and power cables, computer, audio interface, generative audio, dimensions variable. Voice is a sound heard, not uttered – but what is the least information necessary to evoke Voice in the listener? When animals are killed or die they cross-over from object to substance; from body to meat and bones. The word animal finds its root in the Latin animalis "animate, living; of the air," from anima "breath, soul; a current of air." Speakers also breathe, literally inhaling and exhaling to excite a space, to give it life. But all sound, like life, is temporal; subject to entropy and decay. The moral question of whether we have the right to raise the dead sounds ‘horror-ble’ or fantastical at first, but the question is closely bound to whether we have the right to take that life in the first place. Both a form of playing (with) god. While the dead animal can not generate it’s own breath, it can still re sound. Granular synthesis pulverises, dissects, dismembers, and minces sound. But granulation also prolongs what would normally be transient phenomena - sounds that live and die - and sustains them indefinitely; breathing life back into them. It holds the window between life and death open, indefinitely. Jake is a conceptual artist based in Melbourne, Australia.They have worked on a number of short films and music videos, presented talks on subjects such as Noise, Rhythm, and Entropy, and contributed work to various group exhibitions and online publications. Their practice engages with both qualitative and quantitative methods in an effort to collapse the clear distinctions perceived between various subjects and objects. Working with drawing and panting, process and instructional work, programming, sculpture, composition and sound design, installation, robotics, video and animation; Jake’s goal is ultimately to raise questions that encourage conversation between different disciplines allowing the formation of new ways of understanding and engaging with the world. (Website)\[http://jake-moore.net/work.html]

Jake Moore is a conceptual artist based in Melbourne, Australia.They have worked on a number of short films and music videos, presented talks on subjects such as Noise, Rhythm, and Entropy, and contributed work to various group exhibitions and online publications. 

Jake Moore

For millennia humans have outsourced the most demanding and joyless tasks of their lives to unsuspecting animals. Nearby beasts have pulled heavy things, found buried truffles/body-parts and provided us with full-time in-residence emotional-therapy; often with no pay or little recognition. I propose to leverage the methodology of outsourcing for the development of this project. I will follow my spirit animal: Toxoplasma Gondii, the parasite my cats use to control my mind. I will co-opt the labour of the closest and most accessible animals around me: my classmates, friends and internet strangers. I will exploit their efforts to answer the question: “Why listen to animals?” Animals have skills and attributes that we \[humans] lack; strength of horses, exceptional noses of dogs, fluffiness of cats etc. We often co-opt these assets to our advantage. In a similar way, I will approach those who have the skills/time/intelligence that I lack in order to produce the work. I aim to use already formed relationships as well as forming new relationships to co-opt labour without remuneration. I can however, offer to feed participants for their efforts. The work will take the form of video + sound. To produce the artefact I will employ the methodology of the pyramid scheme where I will be at the top doing, essentially, nothing.

Miranda Liebscher

We have managed to silence animals within our citified spaces by biologically and spatially framing the animal world

We have managed to silence animals within our citified spaces by biologically and spatially framing the animal world, clearing the sonic spectrum so we may only hear the sounds propagated by our egocentricities – the sounds of progress and development. The work will aim to express this idea using digital programming and synthesis to disrupt and fracture a particular soundscape taken from a Flying Fox nesting ground in a secluded part of the Merri creek river. This work will also explore the dualism that Berger speaks of in his text (Why Look /Listen To Animals?), in regard to the modern relationships between humans and animals, and sonically polarise the two expressions so to cultivate a more realised vision of our agency within the animal world.
The piece will be presented as an installation work that will be able to run self sufficiently for an extended period of time. In order to fully activate the piece, however, it should be presented within a period of time long enough to allow for volunteered interaction from an outside audience.The technical requirements for the piece will be relatively modest, consisting of a hardware setup that will be provided by myself, presented through a stereo PA system.

Nicholas Kuceli

Tessa Laird

The possibilities of meaning when we listen to animals and they listen to us.

This experimental project by Liquid Architecture reframes English writer and artist John Berger’s classic 1980 essay ‘Why Look at Animals?’ through the prism of sound and listening. We gather together artists, musicians, scientists and historians to investigate human-animal sound via the dynamics of power, knowledge and value in the pursuit of a new question: ‘Why Listen to Animals?’

Li(quid)stening
Architecture

Why Listen to Animals?

Featuring:

Why Listen to Animals?

Featuring:

Related Events