Translating Critter

We, the humans, empathise with critters who display cognitive properties and find exquisite aesthetic pleasure in their speech. Birds are deliberately attracted to gardens and parks through feeding and fountains for us to enjoy the felicitous atmosphere of their song. We use them to mask the humming and rhythms of the machines in a cityscape. I search beyond anthropocentric needs and projections when listening to the critters. I listen to frequency ranges of speaking and listening sometimes inaudible to the human ear.

Understanding the physics of sound, I can use field recording equipment to monitor their speech and translate it to how they hear themselves and how I would hear them if I were to perceive the world as they do. I try to nurtures empathy for the sentient beings and the reality of the mechanised world as a part of nature as an experiment in sonically experiencing their worldview.

Beepblip (Ida Hiršenfelder) is a sound artist and archivist. She makes immersive bleepy psychogeographical soundscapes with analogue electronics, DIY and modular synths, field recordings and computer manipulations. She is interested in bioacoustics, experimental music and sound spatialisation.

She was a member of the Theremidi Orchestra (2011–2017) and is currently a member of the Jata C group for bioacoustics and sound ecologies. Her solo albums Noise for Strings, Vol. 1 (2019) and Noise for Strings, Vol. 2 (2020) were published by the Kamizdat label. Currently, she studies Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

https://beepblip.org/