Unreliable Encounters in Jurong (2016)

with Alice Hui-Sheng Chang as part of Ting Shuo Performance Five

This performance is a second iteration of Unreliable Encounters in Jurong, this time with vocalist Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and uses human voice to speculate on how endangered songbirds adapt their voices to locate their sonic niche in captivity.

Unreliable Encounters in Jurong is a collaboration based on a field recording I made in the songbird aviary at Jurong Bird Park in Singapore. Using the idea of language as an open structure that continually produces change and renewal, I invited Peter Knight (Melbourne) and Alice Hui-Sheng Chang (Tainan) to work with me and poetically improvise with this recording through exchange and reciprocity using a combination of voice, pre-recorded materials and electronically generated sounds. Our collaboration speculates on how the birds vulnerable to extinction sonically and vocally adjust to living in captivity.

Address: No.33, Ln. 176, Sec. 3, Minzu Rd., West Central Dist., Tainan City, Taiwan

Recording Credit Nigel Brown
Performers Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Catherine Clover
with field recording from Jurong Bird Aviary Singapore - birds and people (bird keepers and general public), audubon bird whistles and incidental sounds of a Buddhist/Taoist festival moving along the street outside