The Call: Edition Four

Tuesday 23 July 2024

Interspecies Internet Newsletter

View this email in your browser The Call Edition four | Tuesday 23rd July Welcome to the fourth edition of The Call, the Interspecies Internet newsletter. After a hiatus, we’re excited to bring back this format to keep you updated on the highlights and major events from our community over the past months. Interspecies Internet 2024 Workshop In late April, we collaborated with the Santa Fe Institute and XPRIZE in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the workshop Animals in Translation: Creating Criteria and Frameworks for Decoding Communication in Other Species. This event fostered a dynamic exchange of ideas and knowledge on topics ranging from barriers to decoding, methodology and evidence, research ethics, and animal welfare. In the coming months, we’re preparing to share two key outcomes of the workshop: A publication of the event proceedings and presentations that celebrate community achievements and outline the future direction of our organization and the field. Initial criteria to guide the design of a competition, developed in partnership with XPRIZE, to decode animal communication using AI. The event brought together experts from the fields of animal communication, cognition, behavior, AI, philosophy, linguistics, and mathematics, including members of the SFI community and other thinkers. Of these many participants, a select few also delivered presentations: Con Slobodchikoff | Exploring Features of Communication: A Stroke of Genus Yossi Yovel | From Cacophony to Order in Animal Communication Jeff Reed | Cry Wolf Project at Yellowstone Park Brenda McCowan | Humpback Whales in Translation: Toward decoding communication and its complexity in non-humans Julien Meyer | How traditional extreme transformations of speech may help decoding animal communications Gasper Begus | Intelligence for discovery: Project CETI George Vengrovski | Deciphering Canary Song: A Deep Dive into Self-Supervised Learning with TweetyBERT Laurance Doyle | Animal Communication, Information Theory, and SETI Catherine Hobaiter | Reimagining the Study of Ape Communication We are currently working with workshop participants to form a focus group with the intent to refine key statements and takeaways from the discussion that took place during this two day event. These efforts will feed directly into the forthcoming publication, covering proceedings as well as frameworks and criteria to guide research in the field and provide a strong foundation for the XPRIZE design process. Learn more about the 2024 Workshop Other Updates Interspecies Internet has upgraded its Slack to Pro. While this might seem minor, it’s been a significant effort. This upgrade means we now have a complete record of all conversations and shared knowledge on the platform. We use Slack as a primary source for harvesting content for The Call. Feel free to share your initiatives and updates there, as we often pick up these contributions to share further with the broader community. Join us if you haven’t already! Join Slack Upcoming Initiatives We've recently engaged our community in a Landscape Analysis to improve our services and platforms. If you haven’t filled out the form yet, please consider doing so— it only takes 5 minutes. Fill the Form You can now access the first iteration of the Interspecies Internet Hall of Fame. The field of nonhuman animal communication thrives on the contributions of those who came before us, as science is a collective effort. The Interspecies Internet is interconnected across time and space with this community of shared knowledge. Our Hall of Fame aims to reflect this common legacy and as a work in progress, it will continue to develop and grow. Let yourself be inspired by it. The Hall of Fame “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Issac Newton The Buzz We're thrilled about the recent media coverage, creative works, and science communication that highlight exciting developments and new perspectives in our field. 🌱 “Scientists on Interspecies Communication and Climate” at the Bloomberg Green Festival 🐳 The sperm whale 'phonetic alphabet' revealed by AI 🌏🔗“Lectures from Decoding Communication in Non-Human Species III: Workshop and Symposium” co-hosted by The Simons Institute, Oceankind, and Project CETI 🐘Elephants call each other by name, study finds: Researchers used artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse calls by two herds of African savanna elephants in Kenya. 💡The New York Declaration of Animal Consciousness 📝 Wild Talk: A Reading List On Artificial Intelligence and Interspecies Communication 🐦 Earth Species Project publishes BirdAVES: A Self-Supervised Audio Foundation Model for Birds 🦧 Orangutans’ distinct yells decoded with help from AI 🗣️ Listen to world's first 'chat' between humans and whales 🐵 Chimps take turns while chatting, just like humans The Creatives Making Tracks Making Tracks brings together musicians to explore approaches to intercultural and interspecies music-making. 3ee 3ee is an open-source system based on acoustic technologies for the identification, classification, and monitoring of pollinator species in the environment, especially in urban contexts. Nocturnal Fugue Nocturnal Fugue is a performance piece created by Jiabao Li, Matt McCorkle, and Botao Amber Hu, using a bat vocalization instrument that allows real time play playback and manipulation of bat vocalizations. When the Earth Started to Sing by David George Haskell This sonic journey written and narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth. An audio story for global oneness project. The Nightngale’s song In this Emergence Magazine interview, which weaves conversation, song, and the music of nightingales, folk singer Sam Lee speaks about the transformative experience of collaborating with nightingales, the stories of ancestors passed through folk music, and the space for communion that is opened with silence. Upcoming Events Melanie Challenger at Interspecies Conversations In this lecture, Melanie will introduce a new international project based at NYU aimed at studying, designing, and evaluating how we communicate with other species, take their perspectives, represent their interests, and include them in our decisions to help shape a fairer and more compassionate world. The project works to understand every part of the process of inclusion, from the science on preferences to the methods and frameworks for policy and governance. 📍Online, Zoom 📆 July 27, Saturday Register Here! BATOPIA An interactive VR experience that lets players see the world through a bat's eyes using Embodied Virtuality. 📍:iidrr Gallery, New York 📆 July 26 to 27 Get Tickets Here! Interspecies Conversations Lecture Series Interspecies Conversations is a monthly online lecture and workshop series that gives the opportunity to invite leading professors, scientists, researchers, and students to share and present work that contributes to advancing the acceleration and understanding of the diversity, forms and functions of communication in other species. We aim to showcase emerging ideas and discoveries and host open discussions where the community can join the conversation with ideas and feedback. Watch Recordings of Our Previous Guest Speakers Here Thank you for your continued support and engagement with Interspecies Internet. We look forward to sharing more updates and breakthroughs in our next edition of The Call. Join the conversation: Please join us in a shared communications space for the Interspecies Internet community. Copyright (C) 2024 Interspecies Internet. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. 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