I have been assisting digital media and sound artist Catherine Clover with her project ‘Birdbrain’ – an investigation into pigeons, ravens and seagulls. To participate in Cath’s research project, I was involved in attempts to mimic, as closely as possible, the sounds and voices of these common birds. Cath recorded the mimicry, as well as our conversations during the process. Then followed a live performance at the opening of Birdbrain at Screenspace in Melbourne in November 2011.
Read about Catherine Clover’s Birdbrain
The work brought up significant, and engaging, challenges for me as an artist and performer – from the purely mechanical questions (is it possible to mimic with any certainty the voice of another animal? what do I have to do to do this?) to the questions connected with my own enquiry (what is my relationship with these animals? what’s going on in my mind, body and brain when I am trying to mimic? what images are occurring?)
On the birds
Crows are probably the easiest, although none of them are ‘easy’. Each bird presents its own particular set of challenges. I wonder how much of the challenge is about my own perception of these birds in the world and/or commonplace associations?
Crows are Edgar Allan Poe, witches, cloaks, Hitchcock, those frightful eyes and beaks, ‘a murder of crows’ … yet I also have read about corvids and their remarkable abilities in forward planning and tool use.
Seagulls (and their sounds) evoke eternal and pleasurable nostalgic summer holidays, whether they were pleasurable or not. They are selfish and unsharing; they squabble and argue in a cacaphonic babble. There is always one that bungs it on for sympathy, usually with one leg.
Pigeons I have difficulty with, because their cooing sound used to terrify me when I was a child – otherworldly, alien, disembodied. Cath tells me this cooing is doves, not pigeons. Yet my connection to this image prevails.
The seagulls’ gutterality is really hard to reproduce – although if I hold a small amount of water in the back of my throat I can attempt it; similarly their small, soft whistle is one of the few sounds in their repertoire that seems not so difficult to imitate. I feel a tad more knowledgeable about the seagull sounds because our experience is broadened by a session on the beach with actual seagulls – we listen to recorded and live seagull sounds. We watch the seagulls as they vocalise; we see their bodies, their patterns, their interactions and relationships, to each other, to the environment, to us. Pigeons are a slightly different story: I need more time and practice to enter the pigeon world.
On imitation
Listening with eyes closed helps. I shut out external stimulae as much as I can.
I think I imagine a crow at the times I am imitating a crow, but I am imagining it in view of embodying its voice in as detailed and faithful a rendition as I can, so it’s more about a physical way of reproducing the sound.
I consider physical questions – the shape of my mouth; the use of breath; the way I use my body, and how that affects the sound. What does it sound like if I close off my glottis more quickly? How do I stay with an open, back-palate sound?
Yet I also hold an image in my mind of the crow as I produce the sound. Do I? I’m not sure. If I do, I think it is retained as a kind of disconnected image; that is, as if I’m observing a crow, rather than I am the crow. Writing this now, I am surprised that I don’t imagine myself as a crow. Perhaps this is something to do with a sense that my breath and sound and voice is not connected to my body, my self. Yet I do not believe that.
On the others
I listen to them; I watch their mouths and the physical shapes they make with their bodies (sitting, slouching, pitching forward, closed eyes, wide eyes); I feed back on what I see and hear – this seems to assist my own attempts. As I watch their bodies, mouths and faces, so earnest and committed to this task, I somehow inscribe this information into my breath and body, refining and distilling and incorporating into my own experience of imitation. So there is a loop of watching, listening, embodying, and re-attempting.
On our conversations
Caught up in all of this are the stories of what we might do with this project
how it could be realized as a performance event
how we are together
what it means to be ‘animal’, and an animal
the fact that birds don’t have larynxes (?) so what physical process is happening when they make sounds?
the difference between pigeons and doves
how funny we find each other/the faces we make when we’re trying to do it
the picture of Phil Spector in Robbie’s studio and how his wig looks a lot like Penny’s hair
what is or what makes ‘conversation’?
contributions from Cath about what she has observed or what she knows from the research she’s already carried out
she’s quite knowledgeable really
the difference in seagull sounds in the UK
can you burp on cue, and how is it done?
stress on the voice and making sure we do a voice warmup