Animals and sounds

xmacex · 2021-06-16T08:22:11.678Z

A 30 min podcast episode on BBC’s Seriously…, titled A Sense of Music BBC Radio 4 - Seriously..., A Sense of Music

Blurb

Music can make us feel happy and sad. It can compel us to move in time with it, or sing along to a melody. It taps into some integral sense of musicality that binds us together. But music is regimented, organised. That same ‘sense’ that lets us lean into Beethoven makes a bad note or a missed beat instantly recognisable. But does that same thing happen in the minds of animals? Can a monkey feel moved by Mozart? Will a bird bop to a beat?

Do animals share our ‘Sense of Music’?

Charles Darwin himself thought that the basic building blocks of an appreciation for music were shared across the animal kingdom. But over decades of scientific investigation, evidence for this has been vanishingly rare.

Fresh from his revelation that animals’ experience of time can be vastly different to our own, in the award-winning programme ‘A Sense of Time’, presenter Geoff Marsh delves once more into the minds of different species. This time he explores three key aspects of musicality: rhythm, melody and emotional sensitivity.

Geoff finds rhythm is lacking in our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. But it’s abundantly clear in a dancing Cockatoo, and internet sensation, named Snowball. He speaks with scientists who have revealed that birds enjoy their own music, but may be listening for something completely different to melody. And Geoff listens to music composed for tamarin monkeys, that apparently they find remarkably relaxing, but which sets us on edge.

In ‘A Sense of Music’, discover what happens when music meets the animal mind.

Produced by Rory Galloway
Presented by Geoff Marsh

vals · 2021-06-16T11:35:37.153Z

William Edward Jackson III (born February 13, 1945) served with Greenpeace in its early years (1975–77), as crew member on the first anti-whaling expedition, and as cofounder of Greenpeace San Francisco (the first GP chapter after Vancouver, BC). A pioneer synthesizer player (Serge, Buchla, Moog), Jackson was aboard the Greenpeace V as part of the media campaign to demonstrate whale intelligence, and to disrupt Russian whaling. Jackson played a large modular synthesizer that had been brought onboard, broadcast through underwater speakers, with the intention of communicating with whales through synthesized whale song. He was one of six persons out of a rotating pool of 35 to remain aboard throughout the expedition. Bob Hunter, co-founder and first president of Greenpeace, credits Jackson with saving him from drowning at Triangle Island.

xmacex · 2022-01-24T18:28:58.190Z

Farting is an animal thing to do. I’ve been enjoying this two-track EVOL record about it today (2009 Presto‽)

geh2oman · 2022-02-23T20:09:51.893Z

One of my absolute favorite composers, George Crumb (who just recently passed), used a lot of sounds inspired by nature in his works. One of my personal favorites is his whale song:

Illiacsound · 2022-02-23T20:21:39.256Z

I’ve been recording my cat’s jams for the past year and plan on shaping them into some sort of composition. He recently learned to turn knobs, as well:

r/Catswithjobs - Writing partner

2,130 votes and 49 comments so far on Reddit

r/modular - My cat throwing down a short power electronics set

817 votes and 115 comments so far on Reddit

xmacex · 2022-06-17T22:47:36.363Z

In 30 minute The Dolittle Machine on BBC 4 show Seriously… “Science fiction writer Matthew De Abaitua speculates about building a machine that will let him talk with animals.”

Blurb:

Can we build a Dolittle Machine, a piece of technology that will let us converse with the animals of planet Earth? Science fiction writer Matthew De Abaitua investigates how the latest advances in AI mean that this is now more in the realms of the possible, rather than in the purely fantastical. Starting in his garden with two cats, he finds himself in a tropical forest with big-brained hook-wielding birds, surveying multidimensional neural networks, and meets a woman who found out about her pregnancy from a dolphin. There are also robotic fish and sound pictures painted at high speed by fruit bats. What is Matthew’s machine going to look like, how will it operate, and what will we learn from it all? Featuring: Linda Erb, vice president of animal care and training, Dolphin Research Center, Florida. Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and philosophy, University of Chicago. Diana Reiss, professor, Department of Psychology, Hunter College. Daniela Rus, roboticist, professor and Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, MIT. Natalie Uomini, researcher into New Caledonian crows and animal intelligence. Yossi Yovel, professor, Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University. Extracts from ‘Songs of the Humpback Whale’ used with permission from Ocean Alliance. Sperm whale sounds courtesy of Project CETI.

fourhoarder · 2022-06-18T12:43:02.498Z

(I have a typewriter that they also find pretty interesting and I have a strong feeling that one in particular will begin composing his novel as soon as I fit some paper in for him)

we had a cat that loved typewriters and we did just this. Murphy’s novel (more of a short story) is around here somewhere, it’s pretty abstract.

eblomquist · 2022-06-18T13:04:45.612Z

It would be really interesting to make a typewriter that typed words rather than letters…

Probably not too hard to program with the right skills…

Jonny · 2022-06-18T13:50:24.047Z

Early Lyra video from SOMA has a whale communication backstory:

fellowfinch · 2022-06-18T20:59:15.800Z

Very enjoyable thread.
I’ve been toying with an idea for a norns script based on bird songs, when I’ll get way more confident with using Lua. In the mean time, and I know it’s a long shot but, does anyone suggest any good books/studies on European garden bird songs? Might be a good read for the summer.

Illiacsound · 2022-06-18T21:21:49.410Z

Youtube algo pandering format aside, Benn did some good research here and it’s a fascinating topic (no shade at Benn - he’s a rad musician):

xmacex · 2022-11-03T23:41:54.182Z

A colleague pointed me to these two papers by Reinhard Gupfinger and Martin Kaltenbrunner (Kaltenbrunner of Reactable fame), both in the journal Multimodal Technologies and Interaction. I’m posting their abstracts.

Animals Make Music: A Look at Non-Human Musical Expression in volume 3 issue 2 from 2018.

The use of musical instruments and interfaces that involve animals in the interaction process is an emerging, yet not widespread practice. The projects that have been implemented in this unusual field are raising questions concerning ethical principles, animal-centered design processes, and the possible benefits and risks for the animals involved. Animal–Computer Interaction is a novel field of research that offers a framework (ACI manifesto) for implementing interactive technology for animals. Based on this framework, we have examined several projects focusing on the interplay between animals and music technology in order to arrive at a better understanding of animal-based musical projects. Building on this, we will discuss how the implementation of new musical instruments and interfaces could provide new opportunities for improving the quality of life for grey parrots living in captivity.

The Design of Musical Instruments for Grey Parrots: An Artistic Contribution toward Auditory Enrichment in the Context of ACI in volume 4 issue 2 from 2020.

One particular approach in the context of Animal Computer Interaction (ACI) is auditory enrichment for captive wild animals. Here we describe our research and the methodology used to design musical instruments and interfaces aimed at providing auditory enrichment for grey parrots living in captivity. The paper is divided into three main phases: a project review and classification, sonic experiments at the parrot shelter and the design of musical instruments. The overview of recent projects that involve animals in the interaction and music-generation process highlights the costs and benefits of projects of this kind and provides insights into current technologies in this field and the musical talents of animals. Furthermore, we document a series of sonic experiments conducted at a parrot shelter to develop acoustically enriched environments through the use of musical instruments. These investigations were intended to provide a better understanding of how grey parrots communicate through sound, perceive and respond to auditory stimuli and possibly generate sound and music through the usage of technological devices. Based on the cognitive, physiological, and auditory abilities of grey parrots, and their intrinsic interest in sonic and physical interactions, we finally developed and tested various interactive instrument prototypes and here we present our design results for auditory enrichment in the context of ACI and artistic research.

Edit:

I’m reading the first, 2018 paper and it references the project metamusic

[whose] target is to improve the animals’ quality of life, by designing an interactive musical environment that takes the specific needs and skills of the animals into consideration. metamusic, developed by the artists’ group alien productions in collaboration with the zoologists and animal keepers of the ARGE Papageienschutz centers its attention on grey parrots.

From the paper, pp 1-2:

Recent research in the field of cognitive biology has focused on the role of animals listening to human music as a concept of enrichment [10–13]. Since most of the music is selected by humans, this can lead to anthropomorphic biases. Therefore, the music should be attuned to the animals’ auditory skills. Studies have shown that non-human species also have musical skills [14–16] and display entrainment to auditory stimuli [17,18]. Animal species such as grey parrots, cockatoos, elephants, primates, pigeons, and carps have been found to be able to discriminate between different composers or different genres, prefer music to silence, or move in rhythmic synchronicity to the musical beat [10, 14, 17–19].

A thought arrive into my brain: so, there is this notion of humanizing music; I think the basic idea is to add imperfection and “expression” through sprinkles of randomness to render more human-like sounds which would otherwise maybe sound “mechanic”, “repetitive” and “motorik”.

That begs the question: what would “animalizing” do? If there was an Eurorack module (or norns script wink wink) for “animalizing”, what should it do?

nonwaved · 2023-08-07T13:04:21.860Z

I think what it should do would be specific to an animal, according to what their species’ common musical skills / tropes are.

So the script would have to have a focus. Practically, you cannot “animalize” music, but you could “whalify” it or “scorpionize” it. I guess you could have an “animalization” script where each animal(ization) changes the parameter layouts or scales (presets?). Figuring out species-specific scales based on research and tuned in cents maybe is too phantasy-like? Have humans achieved communicating to any animal through sound, and have it engage in an exchange?

The fascinating part, which those papers seem to move towards, is finding out how to figure these “preferences” out - and how to define music outside the human (which I agree it does exist), with each species’ nuance taken into account

Edit: oh my, didn’t realize I was replying to a 9 months old post, @xmacex, it appeared on my main feed so I just went for it…

radioedit · 2023-08-07T13:13:28.344Z

I never saw this thread the first time around, so thankyou for necroing it

I think a key part of doing this would be to shift the frequency spectrum for the music so the species can hear it in a similar part of its hearing range. I’ll leave this wonderful table here, courtesy of Louisiana State University:

Species	Approximate Range (Hz)
human	64-23,000
dog	67-45,000
cat	45-64,000
cow	23-35,000
horse	55-33,500
sheep	100-30,000
rabbit	360-42,000
rat	200-76,000
mouse	1,000-91,000
gerbil	100-60,000
guinea pig	54-50,000
hedgehog	250-45,000
raccoon	100-40,000
ferret	16-44,000
opossum	500-64,000
chinchilla	90-22,800
bat	2,000-110,000
beluga whale	1,000-123,000
elephant	16-12,000
porpoise	75-150,000
goldfish	20-3,000
catfish	50-4,000
tuna	50-1,100
bullfrog	100-3,000
tree frog	50-4,000
canary	250-8,000
parakeet	200-8,500
cockatiel	250-8,000
owl	200-12,000
chicken	125-2,000

Chino · 2023-08-07T20:21:06.326Z

first of all THANK YOU @xmacex for starting this thread and exposing me to Cats on Synthesizers in Space (I’m ordering my glow in the dark t-shirt when I get home!) – second, I took these pics when I was interacting w/humans with synthesized fruit and veggies a few years ago, and someone’s DOG took an interest and started licking the fruits and veggies

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…it all happened so fast I didn’t get any audio.

alanholding · 2023-08-07T22:50:07.756Z

Based on this I will now start calling my filters different names. Resonant tuna pass filter anyone?

Animal hearing ranges1709×1029 73.4 KB

eblomquist · 2024-01-16T00:24:23.611Z

David Rothenberg has a new book/recording out, the sounds are gorgeous. I haven’t seen the book yet but am looking forward to it.

I’m also hoping to get one of his hydrophones before the summer comes. We’ve got some nice ponds around here!

xmacex · 2024-07-21T15:20:06.387Z

This belongs either here on in Experimental music notation resources, but I saw this 16th century engraving of scores for cats in Rotterdam Kunsthal.

PXL_20240721_1431235911495×1956 277 KB

François Ragot (1638-1670)
The music lesson for cats, between 1653 and 1670
engraving
Leiden University Libraries

chillman · 2024-07-28T08:52:17.919Z

This Goat is able to communicate with its housemates through an interface

xmacex · 2024-10-25T13:23:02.588Z

It’s not about music/sound/sonic specifically, but Matthew Fuller’s 2007 essay Art for Animals is currently being read.

[Via Jussi Parikka’s book Insect Media]