Do Animals Create Art and Music? 🎵🐕🎶🐒🎹🐘🖼🐬🎨

Having asked
Do Plants and Insects Coevolve? 🥀🐝🌺🦋
it is time to ask

Do Animals Create Art and Music?

… a roundtable on humor writing, featuring some of your favorite funny bloggers … revealed the critical gem that a monkey riding a dog is always funny …

A monkey riding a dog or vice versa may be the fodder of some circus act to titillate spectators expecting comical or quaint juxtapositions of unusual animal behaviours. How much more funny (or serious) could the act be if those animals were to display creativity involving certain artistic elements beyond just technical executions?

According to the musician David Cope who coined the term ‘Biomusic’ in 1971, animal composition represents an example of this experimental musical genre, and is realized by “simply listening to animals create music” as if it is a “natural theatre” event being broadcast live with or without amplification and electronic modification.^[1] This definition can be rather problematic because it implies that the act of listening to animals alone can sufficiently constitute the basis of a piece of animal composition without further contextual underpinnings. The saving grace of such an approach nevertheless lies in its potential for broadening the listening experience in the Cagean sense of sonic “happenings”. However, lurking in the same definition is the one-sided perspective that the mental product or experience of animal composition, whether musical or not, is for the sole consumption of the human being, who until recently, was deemed to be the only species on Earth capable of conceiving and appreciating art. This perspective also assumes that music as an artistic composition must pass the criterion of intentionality, under which all music signifies “an act of intentional construction, in other words, an act of creation that actualizes an intention”.^[2] Such an epistemic position ultimately degrades animals if it espouses the view that most, if not all, animal species are largely instinctive automata or hardwired agencies devoid of intentions, inspirations, spontaneity and developmental potential. According to Beardsley’s aesthetics regarding the intentions of the artist, it can be argued by extension to nonhumans that the intentions of an animal (artist) “are utterly irrelevant to the descriptive, interpretive, and evaluative properties of” an animal composition on the basis that the intentions are “neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work”, lest we commit the intentional fallacy of basing our assessment of (the value or meaning of) an animal composition on the animal’s (declared or assumed) intentions rather than on our responses to, or aesthetic interest in, the actual composition, even if the animal can (be available or facilitated to) communicate its musical intentions or creative ideas to the human audience.^[11] Furthermore, if music must have a “purpose and finality to it, shared between the creators of the music and members of their culture, through which they confirm their common identity”,^[3] then the double criteria of having a purpose and intra-cultural identity will lead to the woeful conclusion that the validity and importance of animal sounds and compositions can be decided by how closely related genetically and ‘culturally’ the animal species in question is to Homo sapiens — back to the slippery slope of anthropocentrism!

Another careful reflection on this straightforward definition of animal composition as simply listening to animals in the act of creating music reveals a possible impasse between the perfectionist impressions of nonhuman sound, and the instincts or desires of the human composer or artist to have some measure of involvement. On the one hand, purists defending the right and purity of animal speech will always contend that a true animal composition is that which is performed in a natural habitat away from, or (relatively) undisturbed by, human influence and activity. Unfortunately, the physical world is already so occupied with human presence and affairs that the puritanical will hardly be satisfied by what they encounter as “unadulterated” animal music. To purists’ dismay or abhorrence, mockingbirds and starlings in the northern hemisphere as well as Australian magpies, bowerbirds and lyrebirds in the southern have unhesitantly appropriated into their repertoires the sounds of machine guns, excited monkeys, barking dogs, mating cats, flushing toilets, police sirens, walkie-talkies, mobile phones and computer games.

Purists of animal cries must also pardon or endure the cross-species psychobabbles of spiritually possessed, self-humanizing or auto-civilizing corvids, ravens, magpies, hill mynahs, parrots, cockatoos, cockatiels, galahs, parakeets, rosellas, macaws and budgerigars, and especially the Tweety bird who Tawt it Taw a Puddy Tat. After a brief recovery from being exposed reluctantly to the communicative altered states in which animals incorporate anthropophony (all sound produced by humans, whether coherent such as music, theatre and language, or incoherent and chaotic such as random signals generated mainly by electromechanical means), those purists, now already teetering on forming a new epistemic truce with their own sonic preconceptions, find themselves further jolted by some animals’ uncanny ability to be receptive towards human music, as the following two examples reveal:

There are stories of dogs who hide under the couch for piano works by atonal composers but not for those by, say, Mozart. One music teacher told [the renowned primatologist Frans de Waal] that her dog would heave an audible sigh of relief if she stopped playing complex, fast-moving pieces by Franz Liszt and proceeded to something calmer. And there are reports of cows that produce more milk listening to Beethoven (although, if this is true, shouldn’t one hear more classical music on farms?).^[4]

When I practise the piano my four-month-old white budgerigar, Blanco, sits on a tiny stool at an eighteenth-century enamel and gilt grand piano only four and a half inches long and taps it with his beak. Snowy, an older bird, sits on the music-rest and sways to the music.^[5]

In the first of the following videos, Debbie Center, a professional pianist and music teacher, observed that her parakeet named Bernie would only sing along whilst she was playing her solo piano arrangement of “Meditation from Thais”, and stopped singing when she stopped playing.

On the other hand, if the strict criterion imposed on animal composition by the purists can be overlooked so as to allow some degree of human involvement, intervention or bonding, then the simplest and most direct form of animal performance can often be found in circus animal acts, or in animals kept for behavioural and cognitive research. Animal behaviours and communications have been found to be far more flexible and complex than previously thought. Many taken-for-granted beliefs or erroneous assumptions about the nature and limits of animals have been challenged by research contexts involving not only observations and experiments that incorporate ecological validity but also environmental enrichment (also called behavioural enrichment) that permits ongoing learning and interactions between carers or researchers and the animals involved. Such a close association becomes an integral part of the research, a journey simultaneously blurring the distinctions between laboratory and playschool, between experimentation and domestication, and between observation and participation. These researches are platforms whose structural elements and interactive processes reveal the interplay between natural inheritance and environmental nurture. Their outcomes are highly dependent on the dedication and ingenuity of the researchers, and also on the opportunities, resources and situations presented to the animal subjects. Arguably, the elevated cultural enmeshment and human identification may be another source of objection for purists who prefer to uphold research objectivity and emotional detachment. Nevertheless, the hands-on experiences and findings afforded by these researches have challenged and revised the definitions of intelligence and culture.

For example, at the Language Centre associated with Georgia State University in Atlanta, a twenty year-old bonobo (or pygmy chimpanzee) named Kanzi (meaning “hidden treasure” in Swahili) not only has a 2,000-word vocabulary and understands spoken English, but is also talented at “playing the drums, xylophone, keyboard and harmonica. Sitting on the floor, this huge ape unzips the xylophone bag and, with great care, sets the xylophone down beside him. Pausing for a moment, he holds his sticks in the air. He nods curtly at his audience, then plays a fast and melodic series of notes”.^[6] Accompanied by an animal trainer at the helm, a chimpanzee will effortlessly perform in front of a piano and a score in which the musical notes consist of its own fingerprints — thus resulting in a wonderfully comprehensive exemplar of an animal playing animal music based on animal graphic notation! At the risk of committing another act of objectifying or anthropomorphising under the complicity of music and art making, such a performance situation, whether intentional or incidental, leads to a realistic conclusion that the chimpanzee has literally become a live “animal instrument”, not only in vocalizing or singing to its own playing on a musical instrument but also in “sight-reading” its own creation of animal art in graphical notation. Faced with new possibilities, is the human world patient, bold, curious and yet humble enough for a well rendered Concerto for Amplified Chimpanzee and Chamber Orchestra; or a charming Mr Holland’s Opus no. 2 for the Deaf and Four-Legged, the father and music teacher honouring his hearing-impaired son who has been deprived of paternal love and has undergone animal-assisted therapy; or the next brilliant film sequel and interspecies blockbuster Babe Joins the Boston Pop Orchestra; or a new season of faithful subscriptions to the Animal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the indomitable Dr Doolittle and sponsored by the charitable RSPCA? These scenarios are not that far-fetched at all given that scientists had considered the dog and the chimpanzee smart enough to be sent into space! For artists and composers contemplating outshining those memorable scientific achievements, the vital ingredients, beside unwavering confidence, perseverance and funding, are the pragmatic confluence of anti-anthropocentrism to dissolve human-animal class divisions, anthrozoology to foster human-animal interactions, biomusicology to arbitrate between ethnomusicology and zoomusicology, postmodernism to destigmatise playfulness and sociomusical deviance, a fair touch of neo-Dadaism and anti-art to deflect any vilification, controversy, derision and disbelief, as well as an episode or two in Dr Harry Cooper or Rolf Harris’ television programme.

Aside from inventive, norm-bending animal antics, nonintrusive artists of less progressive persuasion and more passive approach may settle comfortably with taking field trips to carry out a sound-hunting mission, with the intention to capture, store and manipulate the recorded sounds later, either for composing soundscape compositions, or for conducting research in bioacoustics, soundscape ecology or acoustic ecology (sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies). Bioacoustics is a cross-disciplinary science that combines biology and acoustics to investigate the sound production, dispersion and reception in animals (including humans) involving the neurophysiological and anatomical basis of sound production and detection, and the relation of acoustic signals to their medium of dispersion. The findings facilitate clues about the evolution of acoustic mechanisms, and the evolution of animals that employ those mechanisms. Soundscape ecology concerns the study of the acoustic relationships between living organisms via the use of recording devices, audio tools as well as conventional components of ecological and acoustic analyses to examine soundscape structure in order to expand current understandings of ecological issues and to deepen visceral connections to ecological data, insofar as the preservation of natural soundscapes is now an acknowledged conservation goal. Acoustic ecology is a discipline concerning the relationship between humans and their environment, as mediated through sound. From its roots in the sonic sociology and radio art to historical soundscapes and psychosonography, its expanded expressions include the increasing attention on the sonic impacts of road and airport construction, the widespread networks of phonographers exploring the world through sound, and the broadening of bioacoustics (the use of sound by animals) to consider the subjective and objective responses of animals to anthropogenic noise.

Avid collectors of natural sounds comprising biophony (the collective sound that vocalizing animals create in each given environment) and geophony (nonbiological natural sound in each given habitat) usually rely on direct amplification of animal(s) with a pickup microphone in their natural surroundings — a practice that will still ruffle the feathers of some purists who insist that the deployment of any sound technology dilutes the immediacy, authenticity and discovery of an aural or musical experience (even as one speaks to an audience through a microphone). However, any logistical fury from the purist can hardly dent the glee of an animal soundaholic encountering or approaching wild creatures in hives, cocoons, burrows, caves or other secluded places. From them, many secret sounds are discovered, explored and admired in nature documentaries, concert halls, recordings, relaxation music, or the adventure of Milo and Otis. Dudley Moore, or far better still, Dr Doolittle, could be enlisted to supply the subtitles or translations. To the extent that nonhuman sounds can be stored, digitized, electronically controlled and algorithmically manipulated, the zoological privileging and postmodern resignification of A Chorus Line by Stephen Sondheim or Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev can be reproduced with the sonic equivalent of animatronics. Indeed, digital sampling technology has come very close to realizing a virtual Animal Philharmonic Orchestra for the RSPCA advertisement entitled “All Creatures Great and Small”, in which animal vocalizations are melodically transposed and synchronized to a catchy tune in such a fashion that no audience will ever overestimate the human composer’s musical intelligence and underestimate the creatures’ penchant for singing and stardom.

The Newest Sound Around
The Strangest Sound That You Have Ever Heard
Not Like a Wild Boar or a Jungle Lion’s Roar
It Isn’t Like the Cry of Any Bird
But There’s a New Sound
And It’s Deep Down in the Ground
Any Everyone Who Listens to it Squirms
Because This New Sound, So Deep Down in the Ground
Is the Sound That’s Made by Worms

― Tony Burello and Tom Murray

The lines above constitute a set of spoken lyrics for a song titled There’s a New Sound composed by the songwriter and jazz pianist Tony Burello, and his colleague, Tom Murray. The song was released in 1952 on their own Horrible label, which declared that “If It’s Really a Horrible Record — It’s Bound to be a Hit”. It was indeed selling well over six figures by the spring of 1953.^[7] Without actually recording the real sound made by worms moving underground, the song periodically featured an imaginary equivalent of the sound of worms rendered with a human voice uttering “WHEEZ-A WACK, WHEEZ-A WACK” under layers of the latest sound effects and reverberations — hence the claim of the “Newest Sound”. The song was sold to the public as a source of novelty and pleasure through comic showcase, parody and histrionics without appreciable concern about the ramifications of substituting, distorting, fabricating or misrepresenting the sound of ‘low lives’, with whom humans are on less intimate terms.

Conclusions

The sounds and languages found in Nature, and the associations between humans and animals couched in expressive forms of composition, narrative, performance art, popular culture and science, often challenge conventional expectations or entrenched assumptions not only about animals, their individuality, intelligence and social roles, but also about art and music, as well as the procedures, contexts and interpretations involved.

The domestication of animals and plants has in turn domesticated the human species, so much so that we have come to be critically dependent on many floras and faunas not only as food and produce but also as food for the mind, to the extent that they have come to be surrogates, representations and caricatures for our own characters and behaviours, as well as for our need to have companions, to reach out to the other kinds not possessing our language and form, but nonetheless is still able to respond to each other with some common grounds and mutually beneficial interactions, coexisting and co-depending. Just as humans have studied, mimicked, appropriated and even inherited the calls, dances, movements and anatomies of some animal species, many animals have also evolved and learnt to read our emotions, gestures and commands, perform various tasks on cues, detect smells, drugs, dangers, diseases or missing persons, guard against loneliness, accidents or intrusions, and look out for the sick, injured or disabled. One wonders whether the autonomy and sanctity of animals, in the sense of their ultimate importance and inviolability, and of their inalienable status as sentient beings, must be so categorically measured against what has so characteristically defined us as humans, especially when both humans and nonhumans still have so much to learn from each other, the outstanding language barrier notwithstanding.

The ISEA Model comprises blue, red, green and yellow quadrants corresponding to the Instrumental, Spiritual, Pro-Environment and Pro-Animal/Plant perspectives

As discussed in the post entitled “🎧 Facing the Noise & Music: Grey Barriers and Green Frontiers of Sound, Society and Environment 🔊🏡🏞”, and as indicated in both images located immediately above and below, there are compelling reasons to continue to question our complicity with the Instrumental perspective, which values animals (as well as plants and the natural world) in means-end rationales and anthropocentric terms. These reasons can serve to problematize and scrutinize the concepts of, and the relationships between, artistic expression and interspecies communication. The Instrumental perspective is in diametrical contrast with the Spiritual perspective: the latter attaches importance to deep empathy and identification with animals (as well as plants and Nature), whereas the former is often framed in rights, privileges, access, consumption and quality of life with respect to amenity and recreational opportunity. In the current climate of mounting anthropogenic forces and ecological issues, there is a much belated need to align ourselves more to the Spiritual perspective so as to encourage outlooks that seek to identify and empathize with animals through the world of environmental sound, music and art. Spiritually oriented sound making and listening are firmly and enchantingly grounded in the holistic experience and acoustic connection with fauna, flora and biosphere, opening and maintaining communicative channels essential for preserving identity, intimacy and integrity of a sentient world and its inhabitants. An exemplar of such an approach that both challenges and transcends traditional concepts, mainstream ideas and dominant practices of art and music is given its due or debut in a special post entitled “🦅 SoundEagle in Art, Aphorism and Paramusic 🏝”.

The ISEA Model Identifying Human-Nature Relationships with respect to Sound, Music and Noise

One may also question the necessity or relevance of animals painting on canvases or playing musical instruments, and whether these are rather clumsy, ill-conceived or anthropocentric attempts at amusing ourselves at the expense of animals. We may indeed question whether whatever resulting from those attempts could constitute art or music. Even if the results could or should be considered as art or music, we may still question why we often, if not invariably, interpret animals’ artistic or musical creations in human terms, which reflect the imposition of human concepts or expectations on animal behaviours. Ultimately or tentatively, we may come to speculate about whether animals do create anything that constitutes art independent of humans.

There are at least two important factors or criteria to consider in answering those questions. The first is that humans are bound by their languages and communicative devices as much as they are by their tools, toys, terminologies and technologies. Therefore, a certain form of “human self-centredness” and some degree of “humanistic immanence” are necessary or inevitable, to the extent that our conception and consideration of nonhumans have their ultimate reference point in our humanity.^[10] Humans are also still in the early phase of systematically and scientifically decoding nonhuman “speeches” and behaviours, and are thus still limited in the means of investigation and interaction via which artistic creations of animals can be properly elicited, facilitated, identified and/or interpreted. In other words, until humans have the means to sufficiently understand how and what animals communicate, there is no way to properly and adequately determine whether animals have been and can be creative in their speeches and actions. However, humans can readily identify and conclude with certainty about the quality of nonhuman creativity when some animals perform certain human activities such as talking, singing, signing, painting, solving puzzles and doing arithmetic.

Whilst the first factor or criterion relates to finding some common communicative grounds or means whereby one species can detect and understand the creativity of another and vice versa, the second concerns interspecies discovery, learning, exchange, enrichment, empowerment and coevolution. Taking both factors or criteria into proper and systematic considerations may mitigate or transcend the predominantly utilitarian view or recreational approach towards animal artistry and musicality so that the results far surpass those whose main aim or design amounts to little or nothing more than ungainly, undignified, misguided, inane, senseless, puerile or anthropocentric endeavours at satisfying humans at the expense of nonhumans, even if the latter seem to be obeying, enjoying or participating at their own discretions. After all, we as humans have had hundreds if not thousands of years to adapt and tailor our art-creating devices to suit our anatomy and ergonomics, whilst animals, regardless of their sizes, forms and postures, have had to make do with whatever tools handed or available to them, whether or not they can appropriately handle those tools with their mouths, limbs or appendages. Just as humans are beginning to design smart devices, implants and prostheses to cybernetically enhance or augment the senses, movements, functions and enjoyments of regular folks as well as individuals who are physically or mentally compromised, perhaps there will be a day when animals can be given their own tailor-made paintbrushes, musical toys, creative playthings and art-making gadgets, which will much better complement and draw out their native talents, inventive impulses and gamesome curiosities, especially if humans have had sufficient time and resources to systematically and scientifically decode nonhuman “speeches” and behaviours, so that artistic creations of animals can be properly elicited, facilitated, identified and interpreted. Whilst some may still argue that it is unnatural or unnecessary for parrots, monkeys, elephants or dolphins to draw, paint, dance, create art or make music, one can do very well to remind oneself that human ancestors were not doing a great deal of what modern citizens are excelling in and finding indispensable every day, including driving cars and using computers. By the same token, there are yet more undiscovered ingenious ways to elicit, facilitate, identify and interpret creative animal behaviours. The quantum leap in recognizing and capturing animal intelligence and creativity in the future could be as great as the portentous outcome of discovering extra-terrestrial intelligence or encountering some interstellar civilization(s), whose vastly superior wisdoms and advanced technologies could amplify human intellect and achievement manifoldly.

Therefore, we can begin to look upon the age-old dichotomy of humans versus nonhumans with scepticism and even disdain, and start to see living things as entities interconnected in multiple ways through common evolutionary heritages, in which various physical, mental and social manifestations, including emotion, intelligence, creativity, sapience, self-awareness, intentionality and even culture, are the hallmarks of sentient beings — hallmarks that are not exclusively confined to Homo sapiens, but commonly found and functionally comparable in both humans and nonhumans. Bearing the goal or desire to dissolve the human-nonhuman dichotomy (whether conceptually, ideologically or existentially), how does one contemplate the nature and crossroads of humanity and nonhumanity? How does one fathom what is it like to be nonhuman? Answering these questions, whether via solid research or solemn introspection, and also by way of interspecies communication (including the artistic and musical kinds already discussed), will slowly and surely reveal something deeper or darker about our own species as we scrutinize our own views of, and relationships with, our fellow creatures on Earth, even as we struggle to acknowledge and reconcile that humans, through ignorance, hubris and greed, have repeatedly erred and committed discrimination and even atrocities against nonhumans, such as exploitation, displacement, vivisection and extermination. One significant way of relating our (way of) being with that of the nonhuman beyond (the rules and limitations of) linguistic, literary or textual means, beyond (the traps and constraints of) the dominant paradigms of the modern and postmodern, and beyond subsuming reality with signifiers and becoming prisoners of discourse, has been revealed and contemplated by AJOwens in a post entitled “On Saving the Planet: Beyond Signifiers” as follows:^[12]

… The immediacy of our connection with the other, the basic phenomenon of experience, is what is real.

As the modern begins to consume itself and become the postmodern, this is the way forward: to go beyond the elusive public reality of the text, and to embrace the reality of private experience, not only as an idea, but as a way of being, a way of interacting with the world, meaning everything from people, to animals, to plants, to landscapes, even desert and rock. These mean inexpressible things to us because we share their being.

This is the true solution to the problem of climate change and other difficulties with our relationship to nature: not to ask whether they are real, or what the discourses and truths of science or economics or politics have to say about them, in search of some instrumentalist way of managing the problem; but to tackle the problem at the root, by partaking as beings in the immediacy of all other beings we sense around us. In this way we may hope to prevent the mechanistic neglect, or blindness, or selfishness toward nature and the other that has brought us to our current condition. This is only to say: to be poetic, to appreciate Nature, as Spinoza or Whitehead might suggest; but in way that relates our own being, as Kierkegaard might remind us. (To be fair, all of them would insist on bringing God into it.)

The journey towards seeking some ontological truth of, and epistemic truce with, our place on Earth and our prejudices rooted in our self-imposed human-nonhuman dualism may eventually uncover that speciesism is not, in and of itself, a complete answer to the root cause of our defence mechanism and offensive stance towards otherness and animality. Considering that speciesism entails the assignment or attribution of different rights, values, justifications or special considerations to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership (in other words, what species they belong to), it can indeed be argued that speciesism is a pervasive form of prejudice akin to racism, ageism or sexism, insofar as the treatment of those nonhuman individuals by human beings hinges on group membership and physical differences rather than ethics, decency, morality or equality. Upon closer examination, we are bound to discover that the crux of speciesism, as of anthropocentrism, and of every otherness that we could discern, is our deplorable ineptitude as humans to (be)hold difference and sameness together. This fundamental inability has handicapped the formation of an outreaching mindset capable of recognizing that both humanity and nonhumanity are part of being earthlings, that each is often necessary to the other, and that we, in the light of species richness, interdependency and biodiversity, can only truly possess and preserve our humanity when both the uniqueness and commonality of other nonhuman species are held in high esteem as treasures equally worth preserving for their own sake, and for their intrinsic significance. What is and has been mistakenly construed as “a clear line of demarcation between animals and humans” (let alone multiple lines) can be quite illusory and segregating, often creating misunderstandings, denials, conflicts, exploitations, denigrations, decimations and/or even extinctions (potentially including our own). Rather than dwelling on the rigid and delusional belief in there being “a clear line of demarcation between animals and humans”, one should be openminded, receptive and observant towards the spectra and continua on which humanity and animality exist, merge, converge and diverge. In other words, what can be perceived and distinguished as “the clear qualitative and inherent differences” as well as the likenesses, affinities, and similarities of forms and characteristics both between and within human and animal species actually coexist and manifest in multiple continua, just as many aspects of Nature and the human and nonhuman worlds are continua or platforms affording many opportunities and avenues for humans to (be)hold difference and sameness together. Furthermore, the human-nonhuman dichotomy has tenuous currency and feeble validity when we are able to acknowledge that the diffuse (evolutionary and ecological) boundaries and separateness between humans and nonhumans defy absolutely clear demarcations or easy categorizations, given that nonhumans have coevolved with, and contributed to, humans and their culture, even more so since the advent of domestication, and lately, of genetic modification. The unfolding and blossoming of this intricate interspecies dance can be quite contrary, if not diametrical, to the frequently stark and rigid stereotypes promulgated by certain myths, beliefs, cultures, traditions and even some outmoded scientific claims. In this regard, the tragedy of speciesism has been something long encoded in the human world and etched in human history, and thus cannot be erased retrospectively with continual denial, and also cannot be overlooked or ignored with persistent inaction or indifference, if humans were to live sustainably whilst curtailing their ever-burgeoning ecological footprints.

Indeed, the human-nonhuman dichotomy has become so immense and lopsidedly tipped in humans’ favour that the Anthropocene has been proposed as the more deserving name of the current geological epoch than the Holocene to mark the significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including anthropogenic climate change, which could ultimately lead to a catastrophic global mass extinction, one that some scientists consider to be the sixth and well on the way to imperilling our very own survival. In his post entitled “Sixth symphony versus the sixth extinction? An essay on biodiversity loss.”, Dr Ray Cannon, a retired principal entomologist at the Food and Environment Research Agency, invites us to weigh the portentous but often sidetracked issue of the nonhuman world disappearing as a result of being endangered or diminished by human encroachment, and asks hypothetically whether we are prepared to save animal species from extinction by relinquishing ever knowing and enjoying a musical masterpiece such as Beethoven’s sixth symphony entitled “The Pastoral”, as opposed to sacrificing a nonhuman species, especially a charismatic one like the panda or the elephant, for the cherished symphonic jewel created from the crucible of imagination and inspiration in the first place:^[8]

I chose the Sixth symphony because we are said to be on the verge of the Sixth Extinction. Unlike previous extinction events in the history of the planet, this one is going to be caused by us. Directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, most people are starting to wake up to the scale of the impact we are having on our fellow travellers. But what is the value of all this wildlife (?), a cynic might ask. They might be cuddly, heart-warming and beautiful, but how concerned should we be if they disappear? I think most people would be horrified by such sentiments, we love and treasure nature and the living world, don’t we? If so, why are we, as a species, pushing so many other species into oblivion?!

Most people would probably agree, that if it ever came down to such a ridiculous choice, we probably would forgo the wonderful Pastoral symphony for the sake of having elephants on this planet in perpetuity. We might lose one masterpiece of human creativity, but for the sake of keeping, or saving such an iconic species for future generations to enjoy, it might be worth the sacrifice. After all, there is so much beautiful music left. Just simply for the sake of the elephants themselves to enjoy their own existence, it would be worth the sacrifice wouldn’t it?

But what about other, smaller, less iconic, unnoticed or even unloved species? Would it be worth losing a musical master piece for one of them? Maybe not you might say? Faced with the choice of losing just one of the hundreds of thousands of weevils say – they are the largest animal family with more than 50,000 species known to science (and many more unknown) – most people would I think sacrifice one of them for Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. Just one of the 50,000. No contest! They mostly go unnoticed and unloved anyway! Some people might argue on the other hand, that all species are so precious, that it is not worth sacrificing even one, even for something as magnificent as the Sixth Symphony, because the latter is a product, an artefact, and more can be produced. Maybe not as good or as unique, but music is being produced all of the time by us humans. Species are not. It takes millions of years to produce new species. Yes, evolution can work over surprisingly short time scales, but on the basis of the rate of creation of new species after previous extinction events, it took a long time, a very long time indeed by human dimensions, to begin to replace the lost diversity.

Whether or not we are required to choose or allowed to sit on the fence, in the face of such a confronting scenario, and at the precipice of such an existential conundrum, we are uncomfortably reminded by the vexed question as to whether art, the conscious product of human creation, especially in the pinnacle form of a Nature-inspired classical symphony sonically depicting a nostalgic, romanticized or idealized country life, is worth more or less than a nonhuman species, the unconscious product of Nature’s creation, which, if allowed to survive in perpetuity, can continue to evolve and interact with other species, including humankind. It is high time that humans re-evaluate their priorities in order to gauge and understand the ecological and existential implications of having to answer such an unsettling question, as hypothetical or speculative as it appears to be. Indeed, can such a question even be truly answerable when humans still often deny or underestimate the validity of animal intelligence, the centrality of biodiversity, the urgency of wildlife conservation, the severity of habitat destruction, the gravity of climate change, and the finality of species extinction?

Even if we could recognise and appreciate the creative impulse and adaptability of our fellow creatures in their canny problem-solving and uncanny humanlike behaviours, there is something tacitly uncomfortable and inescapably anthropocentric if not morally apprehensive that our keenest ties and closest emotional bonds with nonhumans seldom extend beyond those animals outside their roles as pets, companions, human surrogates or status symbols. The seemingly insatiable appetite to possess and to be amused, heeded or obeyed, even if not on a gratuitous, mocking, cavalier, demeaning or condescending basis, has somewhat marred our ability and masked our inability to relate to nonhumans more on their terms and in their own right. Beyond the human need and capacity to be fascinated and entertained by the cuteness, playfulness, antics or buffoonery of animals endlessly paraded on social media, it is also high time that humans elevate the status of animals by granting the long-overdue recognition of, and engagement in, animal artistry and musicality, such that nonhuman voice and creativity arising from the emotional world and cognitive realm of animal participants can flourish by means of communicative interfaces, expressive media and interactive conduits informed by, and engendered from, the art and science of interspecies communication. Moreover, given the ecological ramifications and existential implications, this belated reprioritization or reorientation towards a much more balanced human-nonhuman alliance is only viable, genuine and accountable when humankind confronts its ongoing imposition of a substantially instrumental, resourcefully totalitarian and stultifyingly anthropocentric relationship on both the land(scape) and the nonhumans being domesticated, exploited, subjugated or even decimated.

As further food for thought, SoundEagle🦅 is offering you an extract from Canadian cultural theorist and philosopher, Erin Manning, who holds a University Research Chair in Relational Art and Philosophy in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada:^[9]

What autistic perception teaches us is that things are not necessarily as they seem. Just because something can be categorized as an object or a subject does not necessarily mean [that] they are more vital than other modes of welling experience. What is needed are not more categories but more sensitivity to difference and a more acute attunement to qualities of experience. This would allow us to see that knowledge circulates and it is through this circulation that learning happens: language and other forms of expression move through us and it is through this movement that we learn.…

In The Minor Gesture, I proposed the concept of artfulness to allow us to move away from the concept of art-as-object. Even with the proliferation, for at least the last half century, of more ephemeral works of art (including performance, installation, et cetera), there tends to remain a very strong association of art with an object, and thus with form. If you add to that the current tendency to canalize art toward a set of concerns or issues (as advanced by the now ubiquitous artist statement), what we have is too strong a tendency, I believe, to connect art to communication, and by extension to the order-word. I am much more interested in the force of art for the invention of free indirect modes of discourse. This is where the concept of the artful comes in — a notion that what creates a shift or an opening in experience carries with it the quality of artfulness. This can include an artwork but is not limited to it. Nor is it limited to the human.…

Creation as resistance begins here, I would say, where artfulness cleaves experience to produce not a recognizable set of frameworks, but new modes of knowing, of feeling, of acting. There is no question that neurodiversity opens the way to such practices, even if only by unsettling the norms through which objects and subjects come to be differentiated and “known.”

This doesn’t mean that resistance is a given within the field of neurodiversity, however. Resistance is always to be crafted. The work must do its work, and for that, the conditions of experience have to be recalibrated each time anew in relation to the ecologies of practices with which they composes [sic]. In Deleuze’s vocabulary, artfulness always calls forth a people to come.

Cultural acceptance or rejection of the behavioural patterns and interpersonal qualities manifesting in certain mental conditions can be very significant to the public receptions and overall social outcomes of those individuals saddled with neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative issues affecting emotion, memory, self-control and learning ability as well as socialization and communication. Such individuals have been labelled as (mentally challenged) sufferers, patients or victims whose behaviours and “disorders” need to be corrected or moderated with therapies and medications. Nevertheless, a permitting culture or an enabling environment will promote understanding and allow those individuals exhibiting such mental conditions to have a better chance of finding acceptance, empathy, dignity, autonomy, acknowledgement and meaningful social roles. In these cases, what necessitates the need for correction or (re)assessment is not so much the mental conditions, psychological problems and behavioural issues as the cultural biases and social blinkers leading to denigration, prejudice, ignorance, exclusion, isolation or abandonment. Similarly, what obligates the need for rectification or (re)adjustment with respect to animal artistry and musicality is not so much the scope, definition, differentiation and delineation of animal mind, behaviour and culture in comparison with their human counterparts as the conventional expectations or entrenched assumptions not only about animals, their individuality, intelligence and social roles, but also about art and music, as well as the procedures, contexts and interpretations involved, so that we can have a far better understanding of, and a much improved engagement with, the sounds and languages found in Nature, and the associations between humans and animals couched in expressive forms of composition, narrative, performance art, popular culture and science.

In an age when the ideas of neuroplasticity and neurodiversity are beginning to catch up to, and align with, the now familiar concepts of, and desirable allowances for, multiculturalism and biodiversity, we can better guard against the pitfalls of overly normalizing, regimenting or pathologizing human behaviours, gender identities, sexualities, appearances, comportments, etiquettes, lifestyles, career aspirations, work-life balances, interpersonal communications, body politics and cultural expressions, as they begin to enter the public awareness and discourse in greater frequency and magnitude, especially with respect to bigotry, conformity, integration, inequality, segregation, criminalization, discrimination, marginalization, ostracization and stigmatization. Ostensibly, what was once woefully misunderstood and regrettably deemed as hopeless, intractable or undesirable, including neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, has been gradually seen in a different light, insofar as certain peculiar modes of perception or idiosyncratic facets of cognition are observed to be responsible for breeding savants, including artists and animal whisperers possessing astounding or unusual abilities. Set against our normality, the apparent otherness of such people can nonetheless allow them to excel in what they do, often single-mindedly in precious, unexpected and admirable circumstances. Accordingly, we may indeed have even more compelling grounds to cherish the fascinating encounters or engagements with certain animal (cap)abilities, for despite their much greater otherness with respect to their human counterparts, whether neural or otherwise, innate or cultivated, some animals have consistently exhibited uncanny sameness to human beings in these skills in which they excel, not the least in the almost ritual-like practice and precision of the bowerbird in designing, the lyrebird in mimicking, the bird-of-paradise in dancing, the nightingale in singing, the cockatiel in talking, the peacock in dazzling, and the crow in problem-solving, never mind that these creatures are not bothered with (re)producing or communicating from architectural blueprints, artistic sketches, original manuscripts or compositional scores as definitive proofs of concepts, or as aesthetic statements of intents, visions and missions. Therefore, in the greater spirit of openness and empathy, in the increasing acknowledgement of plurality and multiplicity, and in the essential rebalancing of the Instrumental perspective with the Spiritual perspective, instead of always so exclusively or anthropocentrically admiring and celebrating the supposedly towering human achievements, human beings can finally be free to reflect on their hubris and their disconnect with Nature in order to truly appreciate their closeness and kinship with other animal species: the nonhumans and all their neuroplasticity and neurodiversity, waiting to be fully uncovered, recognized and engaged.

The ISEA Model Examining Human-Nature Relationships with respect to Sound, Music and Noise

Overall, the discussions here have yielded significant glimpses of animal artistry and musicality to provide the impetus or catalyst for future debates and discoveries in the following contexts:

1. The (re)examining and pushing the boundaries of conventional expectations and entrenched assumptions in art and music as well as the procedures, contexts and interpretations involved in expressive forms of composition, narrative, performance art, popular culture and science
2. The Instrumental, Spiritual, Pro-Environment and Pro-Animal/Plant perspectives in SoundEagle🦅’s ISEA Model identifying human-nature relationships with respect to sound, music and noise
3. The nature, interaction and enhancement within animal interactions and human-animal relationships
4. Affective (emotional) or relational bonds between humans and animals
5. Human perceptions and beliefs in respect of other animals
6. How some animals fit into human societies
7. How this fit varies between cultures and changes over time
8. The history of domestication
9. The study of animal domestication: how and why domestic animals evolved from wild species (paleoanthrozoology)
10. The social construction of animals and what it means to be animal
11. The human-animal bond
12. Parallels between human-animal interactions and human–technology interactions
13. The symbolism of animals in literature, art, architecture, song, dance and ritual
14. The intersections of speciesism, racism and sexism
15. The place of animals in human-occupied spaces
16. The social, cultural, spiritual and religious significance of animals throughout human history
17. Exploring the cross-cultural ethical treatment of animals
18. The critical evaluation of animal abuse and exploitation
19. Mind, self and personhood in nonhuman animals
20. The potential human health benefits of companion animal ownership

🎼 🎵🐕🎶🐒🎹🐘🖼🐬🎨 🥁

---

Endnotes

[1] David Cope, New Music Composition (New York: Schirmer Books, 1977), 297-8.

[2] Simha Arom, “Prolegomena to a Biomusicology”, in The Origins of Music, ed. Nils L. Wallin, Björn Merker and Steven Brown (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 27.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Frans de Waal, The Ape and the Sushi Master (2001), 153-4.

[5] A letter to a newspaper; quoted in Leslie, Ayre, ed, The Wit of Music, with an Introduction by Sir John Barbirolli (London: Leslie Frewin, 1966), 92.

[6] Julie Cohen, “When Animals Talk”, in Reader’s Digest (February 2002): 68.

[7] Tim Jay Anderson, “Lost in Sound: Cultural-Material Issues in American Recorded Music and Sound, 1948-1964”, PhD Diss., Northwestern University, 1998. Vol. 1 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI, 1998), 1-4.

[8] Ray Cannon, “Sixth symphony versus the sixth extinction? An essay on biodiversity loss.” Available at https://rcannon992.com/2016/02/10/sixth-symphony-versus-the-sixth-extinction-an-essay-on-biodiversity/

[9] Erin Manning, “Histories of Violence: Neurodiversity and the Policing of the Norm”, Brad Evans interviews Erin Manning, 2 JANUARY 2018. Available at https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/histories-of-violence-neurodiversity-and-the-policing-of-the-norm/#!

[10] Pär Segerdahl, “Trapped in our humanity?”. Available at https://ethicsblog.crb.uu.se/2012/01/13/trapped-in-our-humanity/

[11] Wreen, Michael, “Beardsley’s Aesthetics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/beardsley-aesthetics/. See also “Authorial intent” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intent

[12] AJOwens, “On Saving the Planet: Beyond Signifiers”. Available at https://staggeringimplications.wordpress.com/2020/08/31/on-saving-the-planet-beyond-signifiers/

Submitted as a response to Weekly Writing Challenge: The Best Medicine.

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