Icthyophaga vocifer

"This piece was made from a field recording of African Fish Eagles in duet at Djoudj Bird Sanctuary in Senegal. The recording has been processed through software to manipulate its pitch and other characteristics, in order to unearth mutations in timbre of the birdsong and create a chorus of ersatz birdsong. What interested me about working with this sound is the questions it raises about the nature of documentation and preservation; whilst serving its primary function as documentation of a type of bird, it is also the documentation of specific birds at a particular time and place. How many recordings are necessary to document animals in a way that expresses differences among individuals?"

African fish eagles in Senegal reimagined by Kiran Arora.

IMAGE: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage