Decoding Animal Language: Deep Listening and AI (Week #7 Creative Futures Counterstructures)
Session #7 of tiat's Creative Futures Counterstructures Artist Residency program explores Rule #7 of the Mozilla Foundation's Hollywood 8 Rules for AI: Value Deliberate Slowness and Depth.
How do machines hear the world and what can humans learn by listening differently? In this workshop, we’ll explore the intersection of sound, perception, and AI through the lens of animal communication. Drawing from research at ESP and current experiments in using AI to decode more-than-human languages, Sara will guide participants through a series of “deep listening” exercises using recordings from different species.
Participants will practice various forms of attentive listening to notice how meaning, emotion, and memory emerge from sound. Together, we’ll consider what it might mean to teach a model to “understand” the world through listening, and discuss how human interpretation, bias, and context shape both AI training and our own sensory experience.
Sara is a behavioral ecologist and electrical engineer specializing in acoustics, signal processing, machine learning, and the ecology of animal signals and societies. She received a PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior from Cornell University in 2020. Prior to joining Earth Species Project she worked in acoustic research labs at the National University of Singapore and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford. Her work aims to advance academic research and conservation while also encouraging joyful exploration and appreciation of our world.
The Creative Futures Counterstructures residency, is a 10-week program brought to you by TIAT and the Mozilla Foundation, where artists and technologists explore alternative approaches to AI and culture. Each week during the residency, we'll have public programming that opens a window into the residents’ process and shares tools, ideas, and works-in-progress with the community. Learn more about the residency: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/creative-futures-counterstructures/
tiat is the intersection of art and technology! we are a 501c3 nonprofit creating places for creative technologists to experiment, exhibit, and expand their practice. ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ Learn more about tiat: https://tiat.place/