Maria Lepistö – The Animals Were Never Alone II

The Animal Sound Archive is a scientific archive of animal voice recordings, based in Berlin. Its online database is open to the public through the website www.tierstimmenarchiv.de. However, unless you are a scientist or enthusiast in the field of bio-acoustics, we doubt that you have ever heard about it. Fortunately, we have taken it upon ourselves to introduce it to you.

You don’t have time to listen to all the 120 000 recordings, but we will let you hear some of our favorites. What we will offer you is a narrative. In fact, we will offer several. This essay is written in the format of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure.
The choose-your-own-adventure books were popular in the 80-90s, but then storytelling role-play computer games took over and the publishing of our favorite series, Lone Wolf, stopped. Now, the latest Virtual Reality games allow us to step into the body of another. The experience is impressively immersive. But it is a body that lacks a history, and in many cases, also a voice.

We believe that the comeback of the Choose-Your-Own Adventure-books lies in their strength to force the player to embody a psyche. Perhaps one can say that it strives to create empathy. What we aim for is a combination of control and intimacy. We will put thoughts and feelings into your head and use you as a vessel to navigate through the Animal Sound Archive. We hope you don’t mind!
We want to hint towards a potential connection between bodies separated by technologies. We also want to hint towards a potential connection between bodies brought together by technology. The theme of this story is death and loneliness as a collective human state of mind. It is set against the extinction of animals, as well as the history of sound production, and voice recordings in particular.

It starts with the handheld recorders of the 50s and ends with automated recording stations and algorithmic voice detection. There is the improving storing capacity of sound, the digitalization of the archive, and the promise of eternal memory. There is a changing focus of research from the study of individual animals, to monitoring whole populations. There is the story of the dead founder of the archive, Günter Tembrock, and his predecessor Karl Heinz Frommolt, whom we have turned into a fictional character. You are about to meet him soon.