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Music, performance and robotics

Sarah Angliss is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, roboticist and sound historian
whose work explores acoustics, cognitive science and English folklore.

Posts tagged "animal intelligence"

Sound ‘recording’ before the Edison phonograph? (BBC Radio 4 doc 1:30pm Tues 5 July)

Posted in Sounds on 23 Jun 2011 •1 Comment
Sound ‘recording’ before the Edison phonograph? (BBC Radio 4 doc 1:30pm Tues 5 July)

This Radio 4 documentary aired at 1:30pm on 5 July 2011
It’s repeated at 3:30pm on Saturday 9 July and is now also available on Listen Again

I’ve also prepared this page of music clips and background notes.

Update 4  July 2011: Delighted to hear this documentary has an honourable mention in The Observer and in this week’s Project Moonbase, the podcast for all your musical, retrofuturistic needs.

Update 1 July 2011: Thanks to Gillian Reynolds at the Telegraph for listening to this documentary and writing this lovely preview.

Preview – read about this documentary on the BBC website.

We know we can teach birds to talk and sing. Here, for example, is an astounding recording of Sparkie Williams, champion talking budgie, 1958. But were birds ever used as primordial, feathered music recorders? Did we use them to bring popular music into our homes on command before the advent of the phonograph, the gramophone and radio?


Philip Marsden ‘The TV Budgie Man’ interviews champion talking budgie Sparkie Williams. The late, great Sparkie is now on display in The Hancock Museum, Newcastle, and June Holmes, archivist at the Natural History Society of Northumbria, is trying to raise funds for a dedicated display.


La Serinette (the bird organ), Jean Baptiste Chardin, 1751

In this new Radio 4 documentary, produced by Neil McCarthy, I’ll be taking this question to biologists, bird keepers, musicians and others and revealing some surprising curiosities in the archives – oddities that should fascinate anyone with an interest in birdsong, music or early sound recording. This radio piece is packed with some of my favourite bird training ephemera, including  1700s dance tunes and some wonderful 1950s bird training records. Human contributors include ornithologist Geoff Sample, poet Katrina Porteous, behavioural ecologist Tim Birkhead, composer Aleks Kolkowski and Yorkshire’s ‘Champion of Champion’ roller canary fancyer Ken Westmorland.

Documentary: The Bird Fancyer’s Delight, BBC Radio 4, 5 July 2011 (1.30-2:00pm)


Wasps with Oysters

Posted in Spotted on 28 Jan 2009 •1 Comment

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been asked to make at work?

Installing a new exhibit at London Zoo today, I met all-round troubleshooter Dave Hitchcock. He’s been asked to build everything from an electronic ejaculator for gazelles to a tiny tracking system, just like an Oyster Card, for Panamanian paper wasps.

RFID-waspAttached to the back of female wasps, the tagging devices enabled the insects to ‘touch in and out’ as they flew into their nests. In 2007, ZSL scientist Seirian Sumner used data collected by the tagging system to find out how often female wasps drifted from nest to nest. She discovered the wasps were busy commuters – over half of them drifted from nest to nest, rather than staying at home.

This week Dave’s been showing us how to encase DV cameras in resin, so we can put them under the sprinklers in the zoo’s butterfly house.


Remote chicken stroking

Posted in Spotted on 24 Jan 2009 •1 Comment

Do you worry about your pet chicken getting lonely when you’re away? Well researchers at the Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore certainly do – and they’re tackling the problem with tactile computing.

Hooked up the web, the Poultry Internet enables office workers give their pet chickens that reassuring hug, while they are in the office. Simply place the data jacket over your feathered friend, then caress the chicken-shaped orb on your office desk to transmit that personal touch. And when your chicken moves, the orb moves too, allowing you to keep in touch with her actions. A very impressive example of tactile computing in action – one which opens up endless opportunities for new lines in happy meat.

Photos from the project website

Your pet chicken stays at home, wearing a data suit

Your pet chicken stays at home, wearing a data suit

Caress your chicken remotely using this device on your office desk

Caress your chicken remotely using this device on your office desk

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Content © Sarah Angliss 1990-present (unless otherwise stated).
Slideshow images © Jenny Angliss, Sin Bozkurt, Tamsin Chapman, Melita Dennett, Peter Kalen, Gaynor Perry, Gordon Rutter and Emmet Spier (used with thanks).

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