Resonant Ecologies: Seminar 1, Hollis Taylor

Dr Hollis Taylor: Previous to her ARC Future Fellowship at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, violinist/composer, zoömusicologist, and ornithologist Hollis Taylor had fellowships extended to her by the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin), Museum of Natural History (Paris), University of Technology Sydney, and Macquarie University. Taylor performs her (re)compositions of avian songs on violin along with her field recordings as well as rethinks pied butcherbird repertoire for other human instruments and voices. Central to her compositional ethos is celebrating avian achievements rather than adding human “improvements.” In addition to her double CD Absolute Bird, she is author of three books: Is Birdsong Music?: Outback Encounters with an Australian Songbird; Music from Another Species: Australian Birdsong Transcriptions; and Post Impressions: A Travel Book for Tragic Intellectuals, which documents her bowing fences with Jon Rose and her first encounter with pied butcherbirds. Four months per year, she conducts rigorous fieldwork recording and observing pied butcherbirds and other feathered choristers. Zoömusicology: A Road Trip through Central Australia My longitudinal project champions zoömusicology, the study of music in animal culture, with a focus on the aesthetic accomplishments of Australian pied butcherbirds. In this presentation, we take a road trip from West to East in the MacDonnell Ranges of Central Australia. As we progress, it becomes obvious that rather than confining itself to animals’ sonic constructs (as I initially assumed), zoömusicology demands broader perspectives, drifting and pulling in unexpected directions, both practical and theoretical. Images and audio celebrate distinct places and birdsongs that serve as a springboard from which to register the diverse themes they evoke. From music notation to coevolutionary aesthetics, from vocal learning to human exceptionalism, and from environmental field recordings to multispecies justice and more, our road trip underscores the centrality of sound in mediating and enriching multispecies interactions. Across the presentation, the term ‘music’ undergoes review vis-à-vis the human/animal binary.