"Communication helps organisms interact to carry out basic life functions. Sound production is one of the most basal ways of communication and indissolubly related to information transmission.
While taking vocal lessons for several years i only perceived what happens to our body when we sing and that made me wonder about how exactly that function occurs. I analyzed variety of vocal organs and how they operate; and created illustrations of these organs. That led me to research several types of calls and ways of communication.
I ended up analyzing whale behavior, their songs and how these are significant for their subsistence. From all the species I analyzed I chose Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) to continue my research. Humpback appertain to Mysticeti or Baleen whales.
They are incuded in the species with the most complex and melodic songs/calls and can produce sound continuously. Mysticeti produce sound by passing air from the lungs across the larynx, vibrating the vocal folds. Sound then enters the supralaryngeal vocal tract, which can be adjusted to produce various changes in sound output providing refinement of vocalizations. The call contains elements that make up themes that the whales repeat in a specific order and it is performed by every member of the group near that area. Every time the call changes, the members perform the new one.
Every year 10.000 to 100.000 species extinct globally. During 19th and 20th century, Humpback whales were almost eliminated due to commercial whaling and were one of the first species added to the list of the endangered species in 1970.
According to this I began thinking of how many languages, ways of communication and voices disappear. ''How would it be to hear something that won't exist tomorrow?''
I designed a 3D model of the Humpback whale's larynx in a fossilized form (taxidermy / mummification, refrigeration / permafrost etc.) In the process of that type of fossilization, soft tissues remain preserved into great condition.
The larynx is being extracted from the whale's body and what remains is the vocal organ uncappable to produce sound. Therefrom a projection of the model is created to rotate around itself, lifeless into an empty space, as a remark of loss.
In parallel I was processing whale song patterns from underwater recordings. Bioacoustics is a very useful method for observing and studing a large range of animal species. It is particularly appliable to cetaceans, because the majority of species produces distinctive sounds as a part of social display, an aid in localization and foraging.
Schematically, I detected some similarities between whale song patterns and neumes (notation), which was the basic element of Western Europe systems of musical notation until the invention of five line staff notation. The earliest neumes were inflective marks that indicated the general shape but not necessarily the exact notes or rhythms to be sung. Later developments included the use of heightened neumes that showed the relative pitches between neumes, and the creation of a four-line musical staff that identified particular pitches. Neumes do not generally indicate rhythm, but additional symbols were sometimes juxtaposed with neumes to indicate changes in articulation, duration, or tempo. Neumatic notation was later used in medieval music to indicate certain patterns of rhythm called rhythmic modes, and eventually evolved into modern musical notation. Neumatic notation remains standard in modern editions of plainchant.
In relation to these similarities, I created 3D models in a symbolistic form by tracing the average shapes from the underwater recordings of the whale song. There are nine units of symbols, each one icluding tree parts. Therefrom a projection of these models is created to hover in that space.
These two videos are presented combined to the presence of sound and engages us in a distinctive situation. We descry paradoxes, things that are morphologically not connected but speak the same thing and are presented with the same immaterial way"
Maria Mangioli
