Parroting

These sound­scape record­ings were reg­is­tered on August 5^th and 10^th, 2025, atop Monte Brasil, in Angra do Heroís­mo, the Azores. Most audi­ble — its ​“keynote” sounds — are the birds that lit­ter the sum­mit crown­ing that beau­ti­ful hike in nature: Fringilla morelet­ti (ten­til­hão-dos-açores, the Azores chaffinch, endem­ic and unique to the islands), a vari­ety of fowl, and, notably, par­rots and macaws, which col­or the sum­mit with an exu­ber­ance rem­i­nis­cent of the mountain’s exot­ic name­sake. We are bathed by a com­plex, artic­u­lat­ed sound­scape. Near­by, look­out points offer views of the bound­less ocean. The tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty close­ly match human skin’s, help­ing dis­solve one’s sense of self toward an ​“ocean­ic” one­ness with the world. Tru­ly, par­adise on Earth.

Except that these birds — specif­i­cal­ly, the most exhuber­ant — are caged. Beside the cage, a plaque announces: meet the ​“talk­ing birds”. Vis­i­tors repeat­ed­ly try to elic­it speech (lan­guage, that most human of traits) from the animals.

In a glos­sary accom­pa­ny­ing the defin­i­tive, expand­ed edi­tion of his sem­i­nal 1977 text The Tun­ing of the World, R. Mur­ray Shafer offers the fol­low­ing con­cise def­i­n­i­tion for acoustic ecol­o­gy: ​“the study of the effects of the acoustic envi­ron­ment, of sound­scape, on the phys­i­cal respons­es or behav­io­r­i­al char­ac­ter­is­tics of crea­tures liv­ing with­in it. Its par­tic­u­lar aim is to draw atten­tion to imbal­ances which may have unhealthy or inim­i­cal effects”. By trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of our acoustic envi­ron­ment through rela­tions of pro­duc­tion and eco­nom­ic orga­ni­za­tion (with a sharp par­a­dig­mat­ic divide between ​“first” and ​“post-indus­tri­al” sound­scapes), the anthro­pogenic ori­gin of such changes is made apparent.

Thus, while artic­u­lat­ing one of the main tropes of that ​“first” nat­ur­al sound­scape — bird­song —, the record­ing actu­al­ly func­tions as a very stylised mise en scène of our inter­ven­tion in the envi­ron­ment. As alle­go­ry (which is to say, as rep­re­sen­ta­tion), it winds up very nat­u­ral­ly focus­ing on lan­guage — on mime­sis as an intrin­sic mech­a­nism of self, pre­car­i­ous­ly bal­anced between alter­i­ty and the vio­lence of self-repro­duc­tion in the Oth­er, or per­haps on the use of lan­guage as an impe­r­i­al tool (a term Schafer did not shy away from). In any case, these uses of lan­guage stand metonymi­cal­ly for all ​“unhealthy or inim­i­cal effects” of our rela­tion­ship to the envi­ron­men­tal metabolism.

This also makes for an incred­i­bly lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of Truax’s under­stand­ing of ​“com­mu­ni­ca­tion­al rela­tion­ships” expressed through acoustic infor­ma­tion as one of the chief mate­ri­als and con­cerns of acoustic ecol­o­gy. Still, this soundscape’s alle­gor­i­cal struc­ture and the obvi­ous lin­guis­tic mate­ri­als should (hope­ful­ly) put in fur­ther relief the (very hope­ful, very roman­tic and down­right naïve) alter­na­tives to this inim­i­cal rela­tion­ship offered with­in: a rever­sal of the mimet­ic flow (from ani­mal to human) as a dif­fer­ent dynam­ic of cohab­i­ta­tion; vocal­iz­ing, singing, and music as activ­i­ties of becom­ing; art as the are­na for the eco­soph­ic artic­u­la­tion between the envi­ron­ment, the social and subjectivity.

These sound­scape record­ings were reg­is­tered on August 5^th and 10^th, 2025, atop Monte Brasil, in Angra do Heroís­mo, the Azores. Most audi­ble — its ​“keynote” sounds — are the birds that lit­ter the sum­mit crown­ing that beau­ti­ful hike in nature: Fringilla morelet­ti (ten­til­hão-dos-açores, the Azores chaffinch, endem­ic and unique to the islands), a vari­ety of fowl, and, notably, par­rots and macaws, which col­or the sum­mit with an exu­ber­ance rem­i­nis­cent of the mountain’s exot­ic namesake.

As with all media that play with chan­nel­ing a mate­r­i­al from a real site to a ​“non-site” of cul­tur­al and artis­tic pro­duc­tion (an expres­sion of artist Robert Smithson’s, pio­neer of Land art, a prac­tice with which sound­scap­ing has many affini­ties), field record­ings con­tin­u­al­ly index their ori­gin. Thus, to lis­ten to this record­ing can (per­haps should) mean to lis­ten to the whole of Monte Brasil. Ter­ceira has been a key geostrate­gic site through­out the whole of Por­tuguese habi­ta­tion of the island. To hike up the extinct vol­cano and up to these birds is to pil­grim­age along a via cru­cis of ruined mil­i­tary fortress­es — save for the one that is still func­tion­ing, and has done so for long enough as to have host­ed the exile of Ngun­gun­hane, last King of Gaza, deposed as the Por­tuguese colo­nial empire scram­bled to ​“paci­fy” Mozam­bique and estab­lish a belat­ed de fac­to occu­pa­tion of African ter­ri­to­ry. We are bathed by a com­plex, artic­u­lat­ed sound­scape. Near­by, the look­out points offer­ing views of the bound­less ocean are sided by World War One-era artillery struc­tures. The tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty close­ly match our skin’s, help­ing dis­solve one’s sense of self towards that ​“ocean­ic” one­ness with the world. There’s a cage. The macaws are agi­tat­ed; the par­rots, just despon­dent. The island keeps con­tribut­ing to the most sig­nif­i­cant events in con­tem­po­rary mil­i­tary his­to­ry. Tru­ly, par­adise on Earth.