Exposition

The Solresol Birdsong Translator - Media for PhD submission (2025)

Jim Lloyd

About this exposition

Here are some examples of outputs of the Solresol Birsong Translator. This forms part of the work presented for a PhD at Newcastle University. A device was built that ‘listens’ to birdsong and translates this into human speech utilising the obscure musical language Solresol (François Sudre, 1866). Birdsong is analysed and converted into musical notes (one octave in the scale of C Major: do-re-me-fa-sol-la-ti). These seven notes are grouped to form four-note ‘words’ that are looked-up in the Solresol-English dictionary. Each note also has a rainbow colour assigned to it. In a variety of configurations, the device can output the birdsong, notes, music, translated words, and colours. Text and MIDI (music) files can both be saved for further output or processing. The software can run in a variety of modes and on a variety of hardware, including PC and Raspberry Pi. It can make use of both live and recorded birdsong.
typeresearch exposition
keywordsBirdsong, language, artistic research, inter-species, translation, transdiciplinarity
date30/12/2021
published26/06/2025
last modified26/06/2025
statuspublished
share statusprivate
affiliationNewcastle University, School of Arts and Culture
copyrightJim Lloyd
licenseCC BY-NC-ND
languageBritish English
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3761405/3761610
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/jar.940166
published inResearch Catalogue


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