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The Phonetics of Flight

Ruth Wieder Magan & Or Mai

Two creators - voice and electronics - explore bird and human language through singing, extended vocal techniques, and real-time electronic processing. The similarities and differences between two voice and language systems, that are perhaps the most developed in the universe, are revealed. A dynamic experience of call-and-response between acoustic and digital, deconstruction of human language components, and imitations of animal sounds creates for the listener an intoxicating and sometimes unsettling texture between layers of sound and consciousness.

The process was accompanied by a scientific dialogue with Prof. Yizhar Lavner and Aya Marck.

THURSDAY | NOV 13 | 20:00
FRIDAY | NOV 14 | 11:00
Duration: 50 minutes
At the end of the show on Thursday there will be a guided discussion with the artist and the scientist.

Location: Erdi Hall, Museum of Natural History

 The Phonetics of Flight by Ruth Wieder Magan

Ruth Wieder Magan - Voice
Or Mai- Electronics
Ruth Wieder Magan and Or Mai- Concept, Composition and Text.

About the Creators

Ruth Wieder Magan (Thelassa) is a unique voice and performance artist, pioneering in extended vocal work. Her creations span experimental sound and physical theatre. She has won awards and touched audiences worldwide.

Or Mai is a sound and voice artist, winner of the Jerusalem Mayor's Prize as a graduate of the New Music Department at Musrara School. She creates and performs the solo project "Teffer" and in experimental ensembles.
Over the past two years, the two have been creating an electro-acoustic dialogue while searching for a distinctive female voice, and premiered at the Musrara Mix Festival 2024.

Prof. Yizhar Lavner is a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona (on the rise). His research interests include audio signal processing, machine and deep learning for audio event detection, computational bioacoustics, and speech perception. In recent years, he has focused on computational bioacoustics, particularly on the automatic identification of bird species from their vocalizations for long-term bioacoustic monitoring.

Aya Marck - I am researching songbird migration in Israel using bioacoustics data, as part of my PhD studies at the University of Haifa, in the Animal Flight Group. As a resident of the Upper Galilee, bird migration has always intrigued me. Over the years, and especially during my master’s degree studies, I discovered the field of bioacoustics and its applications to biological questions. I am currently developing methods and analyzing acoustic data to characterize and quantify bird migration.

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