A Conversation Between a Partially Educated Parrot and a Machine

A performance for augmented gramophone and computer - 2023

Through the use of both original and digitalized birds’ recordings archives from the 1930’s, this performance explores the historical and sonic relationships between birds, humans and sound reproduction technologies. In the late 19th century, Eldridge Johnson, head of Victor Records, said about the phonograph that it “sounded much like a partially educated parrot with a sore throat and a cold in the head” (Johnson, quoted in Kenney, Recorded Music, 47). This is the same phonograph that Ludwig Koch used in 1889 to make the first recording of a white-rumped shama in a zoo in Frankfurt. This comparison gave rise to the idea of establishing a creative dialogue between sound technologies (old and new) and birdsongs.

The performance recontextualizes the history of birdsong’s recordings by blending documentary archives, shellac records, gramophone and contemporary interactive algorithmic technologies. The project emphasizes a dynamic back-and-forth between several types of discourse (documentary and fictional), technology (computer and gramophone), gesture and sound (bird song and technological artifacts). In so doing, A Conversation Between a Partially Educated Parrot and a Machine offers an immersive sound experience in which birds, machines and humans make music together.

“An exquisite work of performative electronic music.”
Lucia Ronchetti — Venice Biennale Musica

“A formidable diffraction of creative materials.”
PAN M 360 — Akousma

Credits:Research, Conception, Composition, Programming and Performance : Estelle Schorpp
Production and financial support : La Biennale di Venezia - CIMM, Centro Informatico Musicale Multimedia, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec (CALQ)
Main mentor : Miller Puckette
Mentors : Kyoka, Brigitta Muntendorf, Thiery Coduys, Oscar Pizzo, Gerfried Stocker, Ali Nikrang, Yoko Shimizu
Sound archives : BBC

© Lucio Fiorentino, Luca Gianfrancesco, Pasquale Sbarra. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Shows :

29.03.25
13.12.24
28.11.24

16.10.24
19.10.23

SIGHT + SOUND, Eastern Bloc, Montréal, CA.
live@cirmmt, MMR, Montréal, CA.
Substrat, SAT, Montréal, CA.
AKOUSMA, Usine C, Montréal, CA.
BIENNALE MUSICA 2023, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, Venice, IT.