User:Dontfinanceapizza/Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs

Birds Singing Other Birds' Songs is a 2001 digital poem created by María Mencía. The poem consists of thirteen singing birds for the user to interact with. These birds are visualized through onomatopoeias, and their calls are vocalized by human singers.

Origins and influences
Mencía had been conducting practice-based research on digital poetics, She had been researching the visual and linguistic aspects of calligrams, as well as the "meaningless" notion of phonetic sounds. A chapter from "When Words Sing" from The Thinking Ear (R Murray Schafer) served as an influence for this work.

Publication history
Birds Singing Other Birds' Songs was developed with Adobe Flash, Adobe Illustrator, and Audacity.

The work was first displayed at Medway Gallery in 2001. It has been published as an interactive work for the web, video, and in print. Other locations where the work has been exhibited include the University of Essex Gallery, Medway Galleries, La Huella Multiple, UB Art Gallery, and Nouspace Gallery & Media Lounge.

The work has been emulated by the Electronic Literature Lab by utilizing Rhizome's web archiving service Conifer in 2021.

Story structure and navigation
The poem is presented on a continuously moving background of a partly cloudy sky; play and pause buttons for each animated bird are numbered and located at the bottom of the screen. The birds are designed as calligrams made out of onomatopoeias related to the unique sound of each bird.

Literary significance and critical reception
Birds Singing Other Birds Songs has had a positive reception; critics praise the work for experimenting with reimagining digital poetry, and capturing how human language interacts with the natural world.