03. Variations on Birdsongs
——Ecological Notation as Multispecies Listening
Variations on Birdsongs is a research-driven sound art project that translates field-recorded bird vocalisations into a hybrid system of audio-visual notation. Developed through a listening walk at the WWT London Wetland Centre, the work draws on situated acoustic experiences shaped by birds, human visitors, and overhead planes. I positioned myself not only as a listener but also as a transductive medium, capturing the temporal, spectral, and rhythmic qualities of bird calls and transcribing these sonic events into a system of drawn marks—lines, dots, and pulses—each responding to specific pitch contours, durations, and dynamic textures.
Rather than treating notation as a closed musical grammar, this project explores it as a speculative ecology—a form of sensory translation that bridges the perceptual divide between species. The resulting score, Variations on Birdsong, reinterprets these field gestures into a composed variation that echoes both biological rhythm and human abstraction.
The work situates itself within the critical entanglements of sound ecology, sonic semiotics, and post-anthropocentric art practice. It asks: how might we listen with rather than to the more-than-human world? And how can notation become a site of negotiation between species, environments, and technologies?
Variations on Birdsongs is a research-driven sound art project that translates field-recorded bird vocalisations into a hybrid system of audio-visual notation. Developed through a listening walk at the WWT London Wetland Centre, the work draws on situated acoustic experiences shaped by birds, human visitors, and overhead planes. I positioned myself not only as a listener but also as a transductive medium, capturing the temporal, spectral, and rhythmic qualities of bird calls and transcribing these sonic events into a system of drawn marks—lines, dots, and pulses—each responding to specific pitch contours, durations, and dynamic textures.
Rather than treating notation as a closed musical grammar, this project explores it as a speculative ecology—a form of sensory translation that bridges the perceptual divide between species. The resulting score, Variations on Birdsong, reinterprets these field gestures into a composed variation that echoes both biological rhythm and human abstraction.
The work situates itself within the critical entanglements of sound ecology, sonic semiotics, and post-anthropocentric art practice. It asks: how might we listen with rather than to the more-than-human world? And how can notation become a site of negotiation between species, environments, and technologies?
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