Dan St. Clair : Sound Art, Sound Installation, and Birds

Call Notes

(2006) outdoor audio installation listen to Call Notes: Melbourne, Aug 2009 - Feb 2010

Call Notes is an audio installation for public spaces. Solar powered speaker devices play the sounds of birds singing popular melodies. Mimicking the location and sound quality of real birds, these devices are hidden in trees along sidewalks and in public parks. I hope to inspire a sense of aural discovery, curiosity, and delight, as passers-by encounter the birds in their daily routines.

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Exhibited :

City of Melbourne Laneways 2009

Melbourne, Australia. August 2009 - Feb 2010. listen

MUDAM Luxembourg, Rainy Days Festival

Luxembourg. Nov-Dec 2009.

MoCA Shanghai

Shanghai, China. May 2008 - May 2009.

Tonspur, Museumsquartier

Vienna, Austria. January-March 2008. listen

SFX Seoul

Seoul, South Korea. September-October 2007. listen

Soho In Ottakring 2007

Vienna, Austria. May-June 2007. listen

Sonambiente 2006

Berlin, Germany. June-July 2006.

Construction :

Call Notes was created using a unique mix of software and hardware. To begin, bird field recordings are analyzed using FFT analysis. This data is transformed to fit the melodies and rhythms of a particular pop tune using custom sound software written in SuperCollider 3. The transformed bird calls are then formatted for firmware running on an AVR Microcontroller, and the program is burned into the chip. The solar speaker device is wired, waterproofed, and sent out into the world.