‘Dear Human’ is a multisensory audio guide that activates messages from non-human residents of this landscape: its frogs, deer, trees, and others. Pair your smartphone with headphones for an immersive experience merging narration with the existing soundscape through site-specific prompts to listen, touch, and find your place within the local ecology.

Dear Human was written and produced by artist Christa Donner, with field recordings collected during Spring and Summer evenings at Tryon Farm. Special thanks to Alice and Caroline Tomlins for bringing their voices to the frogs' performance, and to the Tryon Farm Institute for supporting this project. Transcript follows:

(sound of frogs peeping) 
Dear Human, 
Tonight’s preview is about to begin. / Please refrain from talking… or making other distracting noises. For the full performance, you’re invited to join us here after dark, on a cool Spring evening.  / In the meantime we’d like to share a sample from our latest show: “Love Songs for the Future.”/ Is everyone ready? / Shall we begin? / Let’s begin. (many frog voices singing)/ Have you ever been in love?  Have you seen the future, emerging from a cluster of tiny, perfect eggs?  / What songs do you sing in the dark, on a cool, damp evening? / Will your voice shift too, as the temperatures change? / This is a love song for the future. For vernal pools, their green waters brimming with life and the sound of many voices. For that sense of awakening, to the warmth of the sun thawing our frozen blood after a long, cold winter. Bodies softening. We sing to the rhythm of hundreds of heartbeats. For generations to come! / To sing for the future is to know the present and also the past. Learn and move forward. You’ve got to quiet down when the air grows thick with heat. Leave the eggs behind and head for skin breathing in the cool waters. The young ones will shape-shift as they learn to feed and fend for themselves, just as you once did. / To sing for the future is to sing for adaptation When the cold comes, it’s time to release the sugars that have been building in your blood. Slow down. Stop. It’s time to reflect on what you have done, and not done. What you hope will be. This is important, this pause. / Wait. Dream. / Until bodies thaw and hearts begin their steady beat again, and it’s time to raise our voices, finding just the right frequency… (frog chorus, train whistle) No, not that one. / Finding just the right frequency to sing a love song to this spinning planet. (frog voices build) Louder! - Louder! To this spinning planet who is everything. More than everything. / This is a love song for the future.

Frogs

"Winter Walking" is an artistic performance related to a 4-month daily walking practice I embarked on while experiencing winter in Canada in 2022. The piece is a response to my attempt at multispecies listening, combining the sounds of snow, ice, footsteps, magpies, coyotes, and other beings and writers with whom I was in listening conversation. I first created "Winter Walking" as an 8-channel sound piece at the University of Alberta's Sound Studies Institute. The track here is a stereo (2-channel) version designed for participatory walking. Take a listen and walk along!

Winterwalking - Stereo

Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet

On a family road trip traveling South, a song is made in every state crossed, capturing a state of mind(each recorded on a phone).

Georgia

please listen to this 10 minute audio in a quiet place with headphones.  You will be asked to draw, so please have a pencil and paper ready.

Frogs

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