Mark van Tongeren

en

Mark van Tongeren is a sound explorer and vocal performer working at the intersection of art and science. In his artistic work he emphasises performance/theatrical aspects of music and collaborates with improvisers, composers as well as dancers and visual artists. His ethnomusicologal work focuses on the music of South-Siberia, Mongolia and Tibet. His book+CD Overtone Singing covers many aspects of this singing technique. As an artistic researcher he received a PhD from Leiden University with his thesis Thresholds of the Audible and the performance Incognito Ergo Sum. He has taught independently and at universities in and outside of Taiwan, where he lives.

research

research expositions

  • Taiwanese Bush Warblers imitating garbage trucks: a mutual affair? (2016) author(s): Mark van Tongeren published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
    All over Taiwan, garbage trucks equipped with loudspeakers make their rounds, playing tunes that announce their arrival to the citizens. Designed to reach people's homes at a considerable distance from the stopping points, the two garbage truck tunes thrust themselves onto large swaths of Taiwan's landscape and all of its living inhabitants. According to the author, another species, besides homo sapiens sapiens, has taken notice and musically responded to it. He describes how he witnessed a repetitive sound pattern remarkably similar to a part of a garbage truck melody able to emulate these signals. The melody was collectively executed by a small group of animals he could not see, each producing one not at a time. The author offers a possible candidate, the Brown-Flanked Bush Warbler, and a reconstruction of what he heard. These observations are contextualized within the emerging field of zoomusicology.
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