Name: Selu Herraiz
Nationality: Spanish
Occupation: Sound artist, field recordist, composer, holistic practitioner
Current release: Selu Herraiz is one of the artists contributing to harkening critters, an epochal, 33-track-encompassing compilation which "tunes in to the plethora of vocalizations, mechanical emanations, and any other acoustics phenomenon produced by animals." The album is available from forms of minutiae.

If you enjoyed this Selu Herraiz interview and would like to know more about his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, bandcamp, and Soundcloud.



What sparked your interest in animal sounds? Are there any memories or experiences with these sounds that you can share?

When I was young, my family and I used to go wild camping in remote areas of the Pyrenees mountains.

The sounds of the animals always made us fall silent to listen. Our bodies would enter a state of alertness and excitement that fluctuated between intense curiosity and fear.

What makes animal sounds interesting, inspiring, or just plain beautiful to you? Is there anything that continues to impress you about them?

Listening to animal sounds means being in nature, far from post-industrial noises. This is my main attraction to natural field recording and therefore also to animal sounds.

Hearing their voices makes me feel as though I’m in their universe, and I like to imagine what they want to say, why they’re making sounds at that moment, and what communicative purpose they might have.

I find it amusing to be in this situation where I, as a human, find myself lost, trying to understand something so simple in such a complex way, and imagining the animals thinking in a human way: *What is this human doing with those sophisticated devices, trying to capture my sounds?*

Did or do you do any research on animal sounds? If so, what were some interesting findings?

I don’t approach this practice from a scientific perspective, but rather from a magical and wild one.

What interests me is spending time surrounded by the tranquility that the natural environment brings me and observing how my thoughts dissolve and my mood shifts for the better.

Tell me a bit about your first animal recordings, please.

Until two years ago, I lived in the Ricote Valley in southeastern Spain, and that’s where I began my field recording practice.

The cicadas sing deafeningly where I come from. It’s impossible not to hear them—in the summer afternoons, with the windows open, it can be hard to focus on anything else because of their volume, so I decided to record them.

From these first experiences, I developed group listening sessions, and later I used the recorded sounds to create poetic visualization sessions in academic settings, inviting participants to close their eyes and imagine a journey through the landscape while listening to the cicadas.

What did your first field recording set-up look like – and how has it changed over time?

It was a little recorder. I used to be a photographer and filmmaker, and it was very important for me to work with the smallest camera I could find.

When I started recording sounds, it was the same: I wanted something that would fit in my pocket, that wouldn’t be very visible, and that wasn’t too complex. At that time, quality wasn’t very important—the main thing was the moment experienced, and the recording was just a memory, an impression.

Recently, I’ve switched to higher-quality equipment, which also brings a certain reluctance. I find a contradiction in spending large amounts of money on technology for an ecological practice. But of course, we live in constant contradiction, and maybe without this equipment, the recording wouldn’t have met the standards for a publication like this—or maybe it would have.

Do you have an archive of animal sounds? If so, what's in it and how do you use it?

I have my small amateur archive. I use it to create listening sessions in workshops and to create ambient music, or even use the recordings to add ecoacoustic richness to dance music compositions.

Have animal sounds been a direct inspiration on some of your other creative projects – if so, in which way?

Natural sounds are always an inspiration for any aspect of my artistic practice.

Tell me about your contribution to harkening critters, please. What were your considerations going in? When, where and how was it recorded?

I was with Diane Barbé in Bolivia. After completing our joint residency at Tsonami (Chile), we embarked on an exploratory journey through the Atacama Desert and then ventured into the Bolivian jungle.

We arrived at Madidi National Park. We were taken there by Elio and Ovidio Valdez, two brothers who run the Yuruma association and care for this part of the forest. We woke up before dawn and left an MS setup recording in the jungle, close to a small lagoon. When I first heard the howler monkeys, I thought they were dinosaurs.

[Read our Diane Barbé interview]
                      
Now you've had some time to hear the other pieces on the release, what are some of your favourite recordings by the other participants – and why?

I don’t have favorite recordings; all of them are incredible, and I admire the individual work of each collector, as well as the collective result they form in this wonderful publication, carefully curated by Pablo and Mathieu. The animal voices are all very inspiring and aesthetically fascinating—there aren’t any I like more than others; they are all perfect from my humble human listening.

I have really enjoyed the calm listening to each recording, accompanied by its explanatory text, which helps me imagine the people in the recording situations. It’s very amusing.

The press releases to harkening critters uses the word “signals” to classify the sounds on the CDs. Undeniably, there are many “musical” moments on harkening critters, but how do you feel about the using the term “music” for them? What sets “signals” apart from “music”?

"Signals" may be a more appropriate term for the voice of animals, as it carries a communicative intention beyond the musical aesthetics and emotional resonance produced through human listening.

However, these signals are music to my ears.

Do you think that true creative collaboration between animals and humans, as has been attempted for example by artists like David Rothenberg, is possible? Are there any such collaborations you've engaged in or would like to try?

Creativity is a concept, something that humans have created as a meaning. I doubt that animals engage in creative collaboration with humans.

Moreover, on a very personal level, I think the concept of creativity exists because we also know what is not creative. In nature, everything is "creative" according to the very meaning of the word.

Obviously, we can communicate with animals and may think they are interacting creatively with us, but I don’t believe that is their intention.

Based on your thoughts, experiences, examples, or intuitions, do you think it is possible that examining animal signals will at some point lead to understanding and, eventually, communication? What is your personal threshold for considering interspecies communication as successful?

From the moment we inhabit the same space, we are communicating. I consider presence to be a form of communication. From a rational perspective, we might think we understand animal signals and conduct studies on them, and sure, interesting conclusions may have been reached. This part of humanity’s insatiable and sometimes unnecessary curiosity to know and explain things.

In my opinion, this interspecies communication happens within each individual, in the intimate perception of each being. The same happens in communication between humans; the message is not always received with the intention it was sent, even when speaking the same language. We are communicating, that’s for sure, but not always understanding the message.

The human animal also has a mystical dimension in which communication occurs. On this plane, I believe the message itself is not as important. In different cultures across South America (and surely in other parts of the world), people communicate daily with nature, talking to animals, the elements, and the land. This happens through language, but there is also non-verbal communication between spirits.

I would call it quantum communication, but I’m just rambling in poetic fields that hold much truth, though it cannot be proven, like most of the things that interest me.

Interspecies communication is increasingly extended to plants as well. What are your thoughts on this?

I like to ask the plant for permission when I’m going to cut it for practical use. I even tell it what it will be used for. I establish a little dialogue with it.

I also learned in Peru to communicate with the mountains when I’m about to walk on them: asking for permission and asking them to take care of me and treat me well.

Some have argued that recording animals is a form of appropriation and that they should be compensated in some form. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Of course, it is a form of extractivism, and we must compensate for it; I completely agree with this statement. Humans are extractivists, and I think that might not be so bad if we took the other side into consideration and did it consciously, measuring the impact.

Gary Snyder said in his book The Practice of the Wild that development plans should be made with a perspective of 10,000 years into the future. I believe that the kind of practices proposed by f-o-m is a good way to compensate: contributing funds to the care of ecosystems.

Being exposed to the richness of the world of animal sounds can be an intense experience. How has listening to animals changed your views on various topics? (ecology comes to mind, but there may be more).

Thanks to the travels I had when I was young and later living in a rural environment, I’ve always been aware of the importance of preserving ecosystems and how delicate they are. Later, I began practising deep listening, which further heightened my ecological consciousness. Any political movement has an ecological component; everything we activate has a resonance in the lives of other species.

The magical act of listening to nature has made me think a lot about hierarchies and the arrogance of the human mind, believing itself to be above everything and capable of deciding on behalf of everything. How high is the degree of psychopathy in society, how much lack of empathy. What would the world be like if animals could vote in elections?

Sometimes I tell myself that Gaia knows what she’s doing and that all of this must have a purpose, but it’s hard to believe.