6. Animal Voices, Art History, and More-than-Human Aesthetics: Listening Beyond the Human

Recent debates in animal studies, sound studies, and the environmental humanities have challenged the anthropocentric assumptions that continue to shape concepts of voice, communication, and aesthetic agency. While animal representations have long occupied a place within art history, the question of animal voices—their audibility, mediation, translation, and political significance—has received comparatively little sustained attention.

This session invites contributions that explore how (sound) art engages with animal vocalizations as forms of more-than-human expression. Rather than approaching animal voices as mere “natural” phenomena, we seek papers that consider them as relational practices that produce political territories, aesthetic collaborations, and ethical forms of coexistence. How do artistic strategies and practices render animal voices perceptible, imaginable, or negotiable? How do acts of translation, notation, imitation, visualization, or technological mediation shape encounters between species?

The session is particularly interested in discussions informed by contemporary theoretical approaches, including Vinciane Despret’s concept of the “Phonocene,” Pauline Oliveros’s notion of “Deep Listening,” critical posthumanist and multispecies perspectives, eco-critical methodologies, and theories of resonance, affect, and more-than-human agency.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Aesthetic practices of listening and attention to animal voices in sound art

• Interspecies music, communication and translation in artistic practices

• Acoustic territories and more-than-human environments within the realm of art

• Notation, visualization, and mediation of animal sounds in artworks

• Ecological loss, extinction, and sonic disappearance in art

• Ethical and political dimensions of animal voices in artworks

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers from scholars at all career stages.

Themes: Animal Voices, Sound Art, Animal Studies

Additional format comment:

Lead Convenor: Jessica Ullrich, University of Fine Arts Muenster, Germany

Co-convenors: Martin Ullrich, Nuremberg University of Music, Germany

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.