Thank you for the invitation also to both of you and for this very nice program. We will start with some sound actually. There's no such thing as silence. Our world is teeming with signals we cannot receive. The atmosphere above us quivers with high-frequency noises our ears cannot hear. In the ground beneath us, the chemical messages pulsing through the mycelium are unattainable to us. We know so little about matter, who could ever be conversant in all the many languages carried within it? Yeah, that's a good prompt to start talking about radio practices. Yes. So, we're going to talk about the publication, but first I would like that we start by introducing your podcast or your sound project that is online that is called Sonic Utopias, because it deals with a lot of themes that we are both interested in. And also because this thing, this recording, will also be one episode, if we have good recordings enough. Yeah, so this talk will be part of my Sonic Utopias podcast. It is a sonic fiction storytelling, a futuring series that critically reimagines the world through practices that amplify often more than human encounters. At least the first season was more like this. So it was stories about worlds where the borders between human and more than human characters and materialities are blurred or obsolete. That's great because yeah, I think there's a lot in that that we can both relate with in our practices. Yeah, I think it relates to your work so let's talk a little bit about the publication that we're presenting. Yes maybe I pass one actually if people want to see it. So, yeah, Close Conversations of Other Kinds, I understand it is a project that you started in 2022 that includes a sound installation and the artist book that we are looking at, and it was carried out within the framework of your PhD in artistic research. Right. Yes. And this project is trying to open up the concept of linguistic worlds to more than humans and to look into possibilities of alternative communication between different species. So although you often work with real earthlings and their sounds, I understand that in this project you made an opening up through science fiction and I wonder how did this enrich your practice? Yes, so I mean I've been working with the theme of language for a very long time in my art practice and I've been working with the theme of language for a very long time in my art practice, and I've been collaborating with different sorts of authors and doing some sound works. And more recently, or now it's not recently anymore, I've been starting to be interested in science fiction literature, and especially in the relationship or the stories that are dealing with conversations between different species. the stories that are dealing with conversations between different species. Because I like that because somehow it gives the idea that maybe humans are not the only one that are basically gifted of language skills. It gives the idea that other species might as well be able to communicate and that maybe humans could communicate with different sort of species. Yeah. And another point that actually I like about these stories is that they also propose really different sorts of language, form of language, basically. So instead of just like speaking, writing, or signing, or whatever what we do, they propose really weird forms sometimes of communication, like more bodily or more chemical. And I like this idea that language is not just like this the way humans think about it yeah yeah I like this because it kind of allows more species or bodies to be considered sentient. If we consider language as the marker of intelligence, then this way we can talk about more than human intelligence. So yeah, like about material does it can be sentient through other corporate senses and it centers the human in this way that it is inclusive to other forms of life or non-life so let's play another segment maybe it's going to help illustrate what we try to explain through language human languages have achieved a certain grammatical precision. Yet despite our mastery of them, conflicts abound. What arrogance to believe we might understand the messages carried in the soil and the earth and the air, in the movements of things and beings. Yeah, and actually I want to kind of send the ball back to you, because you've also been working with this approach of sci-fi and sound in your work, especially in these Sonic Utopias episodes? And maybe you can describe some of them that were dealing with such topics. Yeah, in the first season of Sonic Utopias there were some stories that were not so much about language, but it was about more than human ways of knowing and creating the world. And one episode like this that maybe we can hear a snippet of is a short fiction by the Canadian collective called The Friendly Faun. It is a story about a human scientist that wants to attain the secret to eternal life and to do so comes in contact with a network of mycelia and they invite him to join them by becoming, I guess, mushroom or whatever that means. Maybe we can listen to this excerpt where it's julia deval's voice um reading this story let's become mushroom we can show you much we cannot give you the knowledge of eternal life to take away. But we would be delighted for you to join us here in a beautiful existence of eternal flags. And another episode is where the story is written by Yuri Tuma from Madrid's Institute of Post-Natural Studies. And it is based upon his digital research on post-human identities through a fairy forum where people adopt animal characters, anthropomorphic characters to explore relationships with one another and often it is a bit erotic so this is an excerpt where he explores encounters with others through his identity of wolf dolphin man great let's listen to that i'm thinking of a dolphin that can mutate into a wolf an eagle depending on the element i want to be i'm thinking that the water in this world of crystals is luminescent and the effects it plays with the crystals formations underneath the water behave like an aurora borealis, some sort of energy that has life and is the entirety of the ocean, as one big beam that holds all that are in it. I like the soundscape of this one. It's really mielur. I don't know how to say that. Yeah, it is produced by Jean-Pedro Fonseca and Karin Kour from the Zabra Collective in Lisbon. It was a collaborative show. So also for your artist publication, you invited different people to collaborate. I think you invited three science fiction authors to write short stories that you later translated into sound composition. Were there some specific constraints that you gave them to develop these texts? Yeah, so I invited three different sci-fi authors and what I told them was that I would like that he writes a sort of kind of weird conversation between different species. outers and what I told them was that I would have liked that I would like that he writes a sort of kind of weird conversation between different species but that also reflects on different forms of possible forms for communication so not just like yeah talking or speaking but like kind of more alien or creative ways of communicating with each other which is kind of a big paradox when they had to kind of write it in written form at first, but I think they did great anyway. And yeah, I also asked them to push certain thematics, like to play with the concept of umwelt, which is like to think of different species and the way they might perceive the world really differently than us. So like things that are maybe at the edge of the perception of humans basically and I also asked them to think about kind of sonic elements so to think in their writing how they would kind of yeah give some clues to me who would eventually transform this into a sound composition. And actually, I think they did that great in general. For instance, the two little segments that we heard at the beginning, the author, Christiane Vanes, she proposed to basically, like the format of her text was already a radio message. And so the idea was that then I would have to transfer that into well translate it into the yeah the the radio format basically so that was quite interesting I had a fun to do it and I just have to mention that also for this work I was collaborating with a dear friend of mine who um also helped me with the the sound, André Tchintar, who's a local artist. And I just got to play a last little segment of the first one. More than ever before, we are threatened by the inability of our biosphere's inhabitants to communicate among themselves. biospheres inhabitants to communicate among themselves. So that was a very short segment from the short story Umwelts. Anyway, we have a lot of content, it's fine. How did you translate the other stories into sound compositions? Yeah, in general I found this not as easy as I thought, because I thought first I could kind of have a strategy for all of them, but at the end, some required more like a literal translation with some narrative voices used from the text, while others were maybe easier to kind of translate into more like abstract soundscape. And yeah, so it was fun to also think how certain words can be translated into sound. I really like that. Yeah. And in general, I like to work with, so for the sound design, I like to work with like voice recordings and field recordings. I like to do that better than creating new sounds from scratch. So I work a lot in my studio with recording my own voice or recording some chewing sounds or some things with objects. I became a bit like a foley artist in this process, I felt like, and I really like that. sounds or some things with objects. I became a bit like a foley artist in this process, I felt like, and I really liked that. And so lately in my sound performances, I also started to basically show live in a live format what I'm doing in my studio, because I think that's also part of what is interesting about this practice maybe. because I think that's also part of what is interesting about this practice maybe. And yeah, actually this brings me to your own work because you also work even more intensively I would say with mimicry and like trying to reproduce sound of nature and animal sounds and you also developed this concept which I really like I think it's a bit further here sonic shape-shifting which I find interesting because it kind of relates to sci-fi but also because I think it has multiple depths so maybe you can just talk about how you work with mimicry and sonic shape-shifting. Yeah, it's a bit like being a folly artist also. What I do recently, and I will do in my performance later, is try to mimic, or I say maybe embody, more than human voices. Mostly I try this time animal voices, but also the stones, things, electricity or whatever. And I feel like this is a way, I mean, a way to connect to a wider sense of identity and empathy, like build empathy with more than human bodies and ways of being and knowing so for me it's kind of an unothering practice because we connect very much with our voice as a sense of identity and I feel that it's kind of a speculative device when I adopt someone else's voice it's like I'm putting myself in their shoes or paws or claws or surfaces so yeah also like kind of exceeding individuality and the category of human but you can see it as exceeding any sort of binaries that are human constructed so I think it's just like very generous from sound that it gives you this means of traveling between bodies because it passes through everything and it kind of Yeah, makes you connect with something more than you yeah, cool, I mean all these things about empathy and Becoming others somehow it makes me think of this concept that I look at that with my students when I was teaching at the Kunsuni which is the concept of the cosmic bus from Rosy Braidotti and I really like the way she talks about these animal calls that kind of become like because they all they all kind of spread in the landscape they become this kind of shapeless sonic cloud kind of and also i was thinking that this is also um removing this idea that there's one speaker and one receiver to this kind of more collective actions um and yeah i found this very interesting and when i was actually trying to create a soundscape or a sound composition for the second short story from elizabeth von arbor i was trying to create a soundscape or a sound composition for the second short story from Elizabeth von Arbour. I was trying to explore this concept. Yeah. So maybe now we can try to illustrate the cosmic buzz. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Takk for ating med. I'm sorry. Dramatisk musikk Våldskapet So, after this I wanted to ask you about a term you invented that can explain part of your practice. It sounds exciting and it's called speculative phonetics. Yes. So this is a kind of fictional discipline that I invented in the framework of my PhD. So I've been collaborating with some linguists for that. And so there is some sort of real linguistic in it, but also a lot of sci-fi. And so the main point, let's say, of this fake discipline is that the human is now not the only one that is recognized as some someone that has language so other or at least species are now also officially or i would say it's maybe also a bit a controversial idea that the whole uh like animal kingdom is also uh able to to uh to use language in their own specific ways that might just not be really, that might be very alien to us basically. Yeah. And also with the linguists, we have been working with some tools of linguistics and we are trying to hijack them and use them for other type of sounds. So I don't know if you know the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's like when you have a dictionary definition, you have like the way to pronounce it in a phonetic way, like this kind of phonetic writing. So this is usually used for human languages. And now we are trying to kind of use it also to translate sounds of nature and animals. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. I also understand that it's a publication for sound compositions that are the output of your PhD research, but I also think you have a sound installation with a carpet, which I saw sometimes you're performing on it. So what about this carpet? Yes. So this is a kind of close-up of it. And I started to do tough thing during COVID to get away from the screen and do something with my hands. And I created this sound installation that was kind of using this visual element of the carpet. And this is the first version that I presented in Ljubljana. And it was a four-channel sound installation. And the second version, so people could actually go to sit on it and listen to the sound piece. And the second way that I presented it is instead of having four channels, I just had two. So it was just a stereo mix on headphone sets and so people could actually go on the carpet and really lay down and listen to the four compositions and actually I have to say that at the end I think I preferred the second one because I think it was more interesting to have this kind of very intimate relationship with with sound instead of like having it in the space. Even if it was four channel, the first installation, I think it was working better with this kind of composition on headphones sets. And also I started to use my carpet as a stage. And this is actually exactly here, there, two years ago at Sound Campus. And yeah, I like to kind of use my carpet a bit like as a stage for my performance. Also, it brings some sort of visual elements and also sometimes improves the acoustic at the same time. And then I can also just fly to my performances with my carpet. And it sounds like this. I think I would like to use it, so I hope we can talk about it later. So what else is involved in your publication? Yes, so the publication was an idea actually of the creator of the exhibition, Maximilian Lennart. And he knew some Riso print shop in Ljubljana called Riso Paradiso and he told me like, ah, we could print it there because I was looking kind of for a way to basically show the public, like to be able to show the text, the original text that I commissioned for this project because otherwise I just transformed them into sound pieces, but you didn't have the original anywhere. So that was kind of the way to do that. And I'm quite happy with the layout that was made by a friend of mine, Katarina Zemarekel. She's a sound artist and graphic designer. And she made it in a way that it's not like this kind of typical documentation of exhibitions, but more a kind of research, research, or notebook or something like this with different sort of images. And also, also I had a problem with the fourth short story that I used. That was like a story from Ursula Le Guin. And the story was already written in 1985 and I didn't have any kind of, so I tried to kind of get the right to publish it. I contacted her legacy agency, whatever, but I didn't get any answers. So I didn't know what to do. And at the end, I just decided to show some samples, like some quotations of it. So that's how I dealt with it. Okay, let's listen to the segment that you managed to get out of the book and yeah the funny thing about this segment is that while you listen the words start to turn into mere sound and then they turn into buzz, let's see. She unnames them. She unnames the whales and dolphins, the seals and sea otters. They all consented with particular grace and alacrity, sliding into anonymity as into their element. Then, Shion names the rats and fleas. Then, she unnames the rats and fleas. She unnames the cattle, horses, sheep, swine, asses, mules, along with chickens, geese, dog, dog. Dancing's parting with her knees in vast clouds as whims of ephemeral syllables. Buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunneling away. Buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunneling away. Buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunneling away. Buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling. Yeah, and actually what I like about this short story from Ursula Le Guin is that she's like basically unnaming all the animals in the world. And I like it because actually the animals, they don't really give a shit about their names and how we call them. And at the end, she also decides to unname herself and she removes also kind of her wedding name, which is also, I think it kind of, it shows also like all the layers of cultural meaning that words have on us that are not on animals, I guess, in a way. Yeah, so in both our works, I think we propose some strategies to kind of remove the symbolic human-made layer and meaning from things and to see what else can they be or what else they are for others through sonic languages, like non-representational and non-verbal languages. And before we get completely wordless, didn't work this time, as suggested in this short story, I would like to talk about another thing we shared that is the turn towards kind of geological world. So I actually started with the geological world and turned a little bit into working with animals but I think you have maybe the opposite trajectory how how did you how is your work on on the yeah yes more than living. Yeah. Well, actually, the first time that I went in the desert of Morocco was like more than two years ago now. And I actually wanted to record interspecies communication, which doesn't make any sense because there's really not a lot of species in the desert. And also all my recordings were basically also a bit disturbed by the presence of the wind so I was like really annoyed trying to filter it out but at some point I realized okay maybe this is also a kind of interesting thing to look at so like I started to be interested in what I call geolinguistic and also the question of air and how the air is being used also not just by the wind to create sound, but also by us, that's how we are also creating our sounds. We are pushing the air out of our lungs and we are transforming it into different sort of air flows that eventually make all these very subtleties in sound. So I found this very interesting. And a lot of other species, even some that are underwater, also use air in a way to produce sounds, which I found very interesting. There would be no kind of speech in a vacuum. And yeah, I like to see our kind of vocal appearances a bit like windy landscapes or a little tiny version of windy landscapes that is kind of connected to the outside air airscape in a way. Yeah and also the the wind on a kind of acoustic side is very interesting too because alone it is completely silent. It kind of needs a surface on which to bounce, to be heard, but also seen. So also I heard that like actually basically we hear the wind because it's hitting our own ears, which I kind of like. Yeah. And somehow I like that the wind needs kind of collaborators to exist. It's a very collaborative substance in a way yeah and i'm not going to talk so much about this because i'm going to present an exhibition in december in linz at atelier salsamt which will be about this um yeah and now i would like also that you tell us a bit about since you also have have this kind of relationship between the biological worlds and also the more mineral worlds, so maybe you can tell us a bit about this. Yeah, I like what you said about the ruins that cannot be witnessed or sensed without something to be bumping on. And I think this also true about us. So, and this is something about sound also, that it's always relational, but also that it reveals the world to us somehow. I mean, it's also like, I like the city of like species that echolocate. So it creates the notion of space for us. And also, I dug a bit into this idea of accessing unknown realms because through this research I did was about also future and world building. So how do you sound to see maybe the future, to navigate towards the future, or to imagine different worlds and cast them into shape? So I kind of treated this with this speculative practice with stones that I got obsessed with like some years ago here and I framed this research a bit like geomantic listening which means divination through the geological or like through earth and divination as a way of like knowing the unknown not it doesn't have to be something super psychic, but just like access, knowledge that is not accessible to us by ourselves. So yeah, I did this installation work on the topic of stones, where I tried to explore the sound of stones and translate it into English language because it's the language most people read or when you do an artwork, you mostly want to do it in English. But anyway, so I used these, the stones in our electronic devices like computers and smartphones. So in order to amplify their presence there I use electromagnetic pickup mics. And then maybe we can see this little snippet where this noise from electromagnetic pickup is kind of speculatively translated into words on the screen. They say they do it with the help of Boagie that is there. It's very low, but it is. I think the sound is sent to the screen instead of the speakers. So I probably have to change this on the computer. It's okay. Sorry about this. Maybe it's more like... Yeah, just this kind of sound that we kind of know, maybe. If something goes wrong, like you didn't connect the cable probably hear that yeah so that's one installation I did where I tried to find the language of stones and then another one was trying to to show how the digital sounds that our devices make, that are made of natural elements and raw materials, are not so much like human-made technologies, but they also are mineral wisdom and material agency that makes these very cool technological miracles work. And the real voices, the real sounds that they make are very raw and non-human, non-designy and maybe unpleasant to us. But they are there. And we just cover them up with a lot of like sound designing and notification sounds and alarms and ringtones. And, but I wanted to bridge the gap between this very ethereal and digital soundscape and the actual manufacturing process of this, the gadgets that is very heavily mineral and it's also very much based on the exploitation of land so I tried to show this with this interactive performance and like making this sonic narrative, maybe we can watch the second video if there is yeah I'm sorry I didn't find out how to put on the sound actually, it was working before but we can still put some part of it should be working Yeah, do you have some samples of sound for that, Mo? It's very loud but I can hear it. Yeah, maybe I can unplug so we hear it better from my computer. It's like the... Oh no, I cannot do that. It was working before. Hmm. yeah yeah that's so nice i really like i mean in general i like stones because i think they have very interesting acoustics also. They always inform you of their presence, where they are. And yeah, if you enter a cave or if you enter a concrete room, you will just be informed by the materiality of the room, just by the presence of the stones. So I really like that. Yeah. But did you have something, Jade? No? Daphne, I think we would have so much more to discuss. Do you have still something to add about this or should we? Yeah. So we would like to kind of do a last sonic intervention here. And yeah, for this one, we will suggest that we have finally unnamed everything. Neko-Kichik Norske Lagerforskning I'm sorry. I don't know. I'm sorry. Kepala Hey! Hey! Thank you for this participation. It was so beautiful. It surprised me also with the position. Thank you for your attention. It's really hot, so double attention. Thank you so much, Marie and Daphaphne for this very generous presentation and it was super interesting to see like image and all the elements that you gathered for this which is yeah thanks also for accepting our invitation to try out this and yeah maybe I didn't mention it before but the topic of Sound Campus is around this this idea of counter narratives and yeah also making narratives through sound so actually we were very thinking of you when we designed this concept and we framed the open call around that and everything. So maybe you'll find other interpretations of these also in the performances. Thank you for everything.