Kevin Logan,Mike Thompson

A Little Bird Told Me

Lecture

The A Little Bird Told Me project engages with the emerging debate on the ethics of recording, translating and communicating with non-human species. The power dynamic between recorder and recordee is challenged through sonic collaboration with a chattering community of Common Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) inhabiting London’s largest public square, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Starlings are known for mimicking other birds and non-avian sounds such as car alarms, mobile phone ringtones and human speech. Their expert mimesis raises questions about how starlings participate in the oral histories of their human co-sounders. What are the ethics of starlings? Do starlings do ethics?

Through a combination of performative and speculative practices, including an unstable choral workshop in collaboration with starlings, Logan and Thompson explore where the agency of humans and non-humans begins and ends.

The A Little Bird Told Me project engages with the emerging debate on the ethics of recording, translating and communicating with non-human species. The power dynamic between recorder and recordee is challenged through sonic collaboration with a chattering community of Common Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) inhabiting London’s largest public square, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Starlings are known for mimicking other birds and non-avian sounds such as car alarms, mobile phone ringtones and human speech. Their expert mimesis raises questions about how starlings participate in the oral histories of their human co-sounders. What are the ethics of starlings? Do starlings do ethics?

Through a combination of performative and speculative practices, including an unstable choral workshop in collaboration with starlings, Logan and Thompson explore where the agency of humans and non-humans begins and ends.

Kevin Logan

An artist, researcher and educator whose practice spans installation, sound, moving image and performance, engaging critically with cross-disciplinary and more-than-human contexts.

Mike Thompson

A design researcher and lecturer employing participatory and making-led methodologies to investigate material participation and human–nonhuman entanglements from an ecological perspective.

Authors: Kevin Logan, Mike Thompson
Photo: Matej Tomažin

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN

Performative Lecture Keynote
no signal

no signal

A performative lecture uses sound, poetry and text-scores to rethink “no signal” as an opening for hearing silence and the silenced differently.

Discussion
Ethnography of Silence(s)

Ethnography of Silence(s)

Drawing on ethnographic research into exodus, memory and belief, the lecture examines silence through power, trauma, resistance and collective identity.

Discussion
The Culture of Listening

The Culture of Listening

A conceptual walk from physics and psychoacoustics to sound ecology addresses noise, the right to silence and the social responsibility of listening.

Discussion
The Slovenian Reception of John Cage – Meaningful Silence

The Slovenian Reception of John Cage – Meaningful Silence

The lecture traces the ambivalent reception of John Cage in post-war Slovenian music and his resonance in alternative and interdisciplinary practices.

Peripatetic lecture
Sounding in Silence: Non-verbal Sound Games in the Rhythm of Opposites and Contradictions

Sounding in Silence: Non-verbal Sound Games in the Rhythm of Opposites and Contradictions

A peripatetic lecture explores intentionality, rhythm and the paradox of experiencing sound and silence while walking.

Peripatetic lecture
The Bird Sounds of the Salines

The Bird Sounds of the Salines

A peripatetic lecture combining slow movement and listening to explore bird habitats and soundscapes of the Sečovlje Salina Nature Park.

Peripatetic lecture
The Dramaturgy of Time as a Factor in Creating Spaces of Relationality, Wonder and Attunement

The Dramaturgy of Time as a Factor in Creating Spaces of Relationality, Wonder and Attunement

A lecture exploring time as a dramaturgical tool for shaping spaces of perception, relationality and attunement.

Keynote speech
(De)coloniality of Sensing

(De)coloniality of Sensing

The coloniality of perception shapes the world, while artistic practices dismantle it through decolonial experience.

Discussion
When the unspeakable is brought to light …

When the unspeakable is brought to light …

Dark soundscapes reveal overlooked urban relations, exclusions and ecopolitical tensions.

Lecture
Screaming Air

Screaming Air

A performative lecture exploring the sonic intrusion of cicadas as a signal of climatic, perceptual and cultural shifts.