BioFONIKA
Decibel new music ensemble is working with composers Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose to create a major new performance inspired by Australian birdsong.
BioFONIKA is a work that explores Australian birdsong via field recordings and electronic transformations, text about birds, and transcriptions performed by musicians. The live performance will be presented in a unique, spatially distributed presentation where sound will envelop the audience, creating a spectacular listening experience where we contemplate our relationship to our precious, and often endangered, avian friends.
Decibel will play within and around recordings of birds and their environments, human stories of interactions with birds, and transcriptions of their song created by Taylor and Rose. The work will be premiered at the Derkson Studio at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts new campus in Perth 2027, followed by a season at the David Li Gallery in Melbourne.
A call out for sound recordings of and about Australian birds
As part of this project, we invite the public to contribute a citizen‑science component – your own audio recordings of birds you have experienced, to be featured in and/or transcribed for the performance.
We welcome audio recordings capturing:
– Australian birdsong
– Spoken stories about memorable encounters with birds
– Historic or archival recordings connected to Australian birdsong
Your recording should be:
– Between 1 and 5 minutes
– In a .wav or .aiff format
– Include your name, location of the recording, the type of bird (if you know it), the time or recording, date and any other information you’d like us to know at the end of the recording.
– Upload your recording and accompanying information by 30 May 2026.
If you have any questions, send them to decibelnewmusicensemble@gmail.com and please read our tip sheet about how to make the best possible recording of your bird below.
Submission deadline: 30 May 2026
AUDIO REORDING TIPS FOR CONTRIBUTORS
• Please submit your audio as a .wav or .aif file. Compressed formats such as .mp3 (including most phone recordings) are not suitable for our purposes.
• If you have a windsock, use it to reduce ambient noise. Whether or not you have one, record 30 seconds of “silence” at the start or end of your recording. This helps us sample the background noise for any necessary filtering.
• Do not apply any filters or noise reduction yourself. We prefer to receive the raw, unprocessed recording.
• At the end of your recording, please speak a brief ident: date, time, location, your name, and any other relevant details.
• If you are submitting a spoken bird story, the same guidelines apply.
• If you are sharing a historic recording related to the theme, we understand that the audio quality may vary; we will take that into account.
WHO ARE WE?
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. It is also supported by Edith Cowan and Monash University’s.
APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre’s recognised Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose as ‘music visionaries’ in jointly awarding them the 2025 Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music. In this, their work was described as pioneering, deeply original, and grounded in a long‑term commitment to Australian sound worlds.
Violinist/composer, zoömusicologist, and ornithologist Hollis Taylor performs her (re)compositions of avian songs on violin along with her environmental field recordings and also rethinks pied butcherbird repertoire for other human instruments and voices. In addition to her double CD Absolute Bird, she is author of three books: Is Birdsong Music?, Music from Another Species: Australian Birdsong Transcriptions, and Post Impressions: A Travel Book for Tragic Intellectuals.
Jon Rose‘s primary life’s work is The Relative Violin: the development of a total artform based around the one instrument – it includes innovation in the fields of new instrument design, environmental performance, new instrumental techniques, radiophonic works, and the development of inter-active electronics. He is featured regularly in worldwide festivals of New Music, Jazz, Performance and Sound Art. In 2012 Jon was honoured with The Music Board of The Australia Council’s Don Banks Award for lifetime achievement and contribution to Australian music.
Decibel is a new music ensemble that focus on the integration of acoustic and electronic instruments in chamber music performance, founded in Western Australia. Whilst rooted in western art music tradition, Decibel aim to remove stylistic boundaries in their commissioning and performance approaches. Since their foundation in 2009, Decibel have commissioned over 100 new works, released 12 albums and toured worldwide. In 2025 they were awarded an APRA AMCOS Art Music Luminary Award for our sustained commitment that has transformed the Australian music landscape.