The (science of) nature and its own voice

deep time of the interaction between art, technology and science in South America

Abstract

This paper is a comprehensive review of the text "Zoophonia: Thesis on the Possibility of Describing the Sounds and Articulations of the Voice of Animals" written in 1829 in Brazil by the Frenchman Hercules Florence (1). This document is of eminent importance for the discourse of Media Archeology from South America given that it anticipates modes of the study of the life sciences characteristic of the 20th and 21st centuries, which involve techniques of approximation and recording of sound to explore the voices and songs of living beings. Beyond that, the Zoophonia as proposed by Florence is a Science, a Science from the new world within the framework of the colonial context of the scientific expeditions of the 19th century. The multiple activities of Florence, as an inventor of devices (2), as a visual artist and as a proponent of scientific fields show that the interactions between these fields are present a long time ago in different stages of culture and are not only a characteristic of the current times. The paper proposes a reflection on heritage, on how to reactivate this heritage through academic study and creative practice, including composing pieces based on what the Zoophonia proposes. Likewise, it explores how this project can serve as inspiration for the concrete design of a spatial and computational sound installation that approaches the sonification of data and information. At the base of this paper is the process of translation into Spanish and English of the original Zoophonia document, of which some fragments are included in the body of the text, it should be noted that this is the first time this text has been translated into Spanish (3 ).