S4E3: Bioacoustics with Mickey Vallee

In this episode Claudia continues the focus on methodology as it relates to animals and sound. This time Mickey Vallee joins The Animal Turn to talk about the concept of bioacoustics and how using bioacoustics methods alters the ways researchers relate to their research subjects – who are often animals. They discuss some of the theory and ideas circulating bioacoustics generally and Mickey’s experiences more specifically. 

 
Date Recorded: 26 October 2021

 
Mickey Vallee is an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies at Athabasca University in Alberta, where he also holds the Canada Research Chair in Community, Identity and Digital Media. His work focuses on developing interdisciplinary sonic methodologies to develop new insights on human/animal relations. He has been working on a theory of critical bioacoustics, which grows out of his empirical research with bioacoustics researchers across Canada and the United States. Against a mechanistic ideology of bioacoustics sciences, critical bioacoustics, by contrast, builds a new ethical system that is less focused on the atomistic constitution of the organism than it is on the primacy of relations in sonic communication. Read more about Mickey here or connect with him on Twitter (@mickeyvallee). 

 
Featured: Keynote Lecture by Prof Rosi Braidotti  at the Posthumanism and Society Conference; Wikipedia page about Little Nipper; A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Delueze and Flex; What would animals say if we asked the right questions by Vinciane Despret; Listening by Jean-Luc Nancy and Charlotte Mandell;

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory (SAPLab)
The SAP Lab provides workspace and equipment for students engaged in sound related activities.

Sonic Arts Studio
The Queen’s Sonic Arts Studio (formerly Electroacoustic Music Studio) was founded in 1970.

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