Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs

I had a lot of fun taking in Maria Mencia’s sound poem. At first I tried to not go through the process of meaning making and just enjoyed interacting with the work. Exploring all of the sounds made by each of the human representations of bird sounds, the images, and the text representation of bird calls. As I started playing with the sounds, overlapping bird songs on top of each other, and exploring the interactivity of the poem, I started to think about how this work is a great experiment in representation. The sounds are interpretations of the actual bird sounds. The images, again, are interpretations as well, and so are the textual translations of the sounds that help make up the image of the birds. This all came together to make me think of how all literature is really a matter of representation and translation. Literature is never a real representation of the actual, but a “next best thing” representation of the actual. This e-poem is a great experiment in finding new ways to relay this translation without completely revealing the actual. It was lovely and very engrossing.