After working with the complete installation on Terschelling it became clear that it was time to focus on the artistic questions once again. Not just the questions regarding sound and structure but it was also necessary to rethink the initial concept and attitude of this project. I wrote the research proposal in 2022 and at the time I expressed the central research question as 'an investigation into the possibilities of performing together with insect and amphibians'. In doing so we would aim to 'give a voice to non-human life in our artistic practice'. Although the project was not intended to study possible (musical) interactions between the human performers and the animals on site, I left this question unaddressed - hoping maybe for some unexpected outcome (against my better judgement). As a result, this was always one of the first questions that people asked me when talking about this project. 'Do the animals respond to your music?' Or: 'Is there any interaction going on?'
Good questions. At this point I wouldn't say that we are trying to give non-human life a voice in our artistic practice. Non-human lifeforms have many voices already - if anything we need to listen. And our artistic practice is not relevant to them. Artistic practice is relevant to people, this is why we invite an audience. So it would be more accurate to say that we are trying to add our voice to all the voices that are out there in a way that it can be appreciated as a piece of music by the human audience. Much the same as you would add your voice to a 'normal' choir. Trying to blend in, in a way that enriches the total sound.
As for the questions of interaction: clearly frogs, toads, grasshoppers et cetera are aware of our presence. They notice the physical vibrations of our footsteps, they can hear the sounds we produce. And it is likely that they respond to it. If we would spend lots of time between them and carefully observe their behaviour we woudl probably learn to recognize some of these reactions. But even then the question remains: is this interaction? Interaction requires a common frame of reference. And although we share a lot of reality with animals (physical sensastions of pleasure and discomfort, pain, hunger, lust, satisfaction, fear) music and language are the areas where it becomes complicated (it's already complicated between different indivuduals of Homo sapiens...).
Over the past months I read some interesting books and articles about all the work that is being done at this moment by researchers that use AI to decode the language of all sort of animal (and also plant!) species. No doubt this is a very exciting research field with the potential to give us a lot of new knowledge and insight into animal language. Nevertheless, I keep coming back to the famous words of Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations: 'If a lion could speak, we couldn't understand him.' We might be able to decode all sort of functional information like 'I am hungry', or 'Go away'. But if the lion says: 'This is beautiful' - what would it mean? Unless we are somehow able to turn into lions ourselves (and forget all human knowledge and experience) we will never know. But that is all right. In order to appreciate something we don't need to understand it.
Another important issue: what is the impact of our presence and our sound on the species on site, and how can we limit this impact?
Most likely our presence will have some sort of impact on an animal population. They are aware of our presence and of course they can hear us. A lot of research has been done on the impact of noise on animals, but usually the focus is on long periods of exposure and significant levels (traffic, airplanes, ships, offshore drilling). The impact can be severe, depending on species, levels, spectrum et cetera.
Our situation is not really comparable since we will only be at a given spot for a few hours per day and only for a few days anyway. I have contacted Hans Slabbekoorn, who is a professor of Acoustic Ecology and Behaviour at the University of Leiden. In his opinion our impact should be minimal and acceptable if we take care of a few things:
* Avoiding sample playback of the species own call, since this could potentailly be disturbing.
* Avoiding spectral overlap to avoid the problem of masking. Especially in noise like sounds we should avoid the peak frequencies of the chorusing species. In the case of natterjack toads for example we should not 'occupy' the frequency region between 1500 and 200 Hz, since this is their main zone.
* Physical measures such as distance from the pool/breeding ground, barriers, and walking routes. All these precautions are being discussed with the local wildlife manager.
My first instrumental set up consisted of electric guitar pedals only patched together in a positive feedback loop. But although this lead to some interesting sounds this set up turned out too hard to control.
So then I took a deep breath and started exploring the word of experimental synthesizers. My first two pieces of equipment: The Synadrone (made my Synamodec) and the Radio Sputnik (by Error Instruments). Although these synths definetely need practice too, it was clear that they offered a lot of nice 'in between music and noise' sounds.
There is no standard way of notating patches. All you can do is record the audio and write and/or draw notes.