The idea of this investigative artistic project is to record and collect sounds, through ambisonic sound trap, that human has never been able to hear: to bring the human ear closer to those moments in which the animal kingdom lives freely, during night-time, when predators, wild birds and their prey live alone, without any human presence. Bioacoustic aspects make an important segment of this project as well as relations between animals and their acoustic surroundings on the micro-location of Natural Parks and Bio-reserves. These recordings also make a significant contribution to assessment of biodiversity in those areas, in relation to anthropogenic noise and sound pollution, making them valuable archival material for future generations.

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In Dialogue: Artist Talk with gnration, Braga

In spring 2023, Davor started his EMAP residency at gnration, in Braga (Portugal). Every two weeks he went to Gerês National Park to place, maintain and change the audio and video traps he is using to monitor and record animal life in its natural habitat. The gnration team went with Davor to the places he was mounting these traps and talked with him about the work he’s been doing on the mountain range.

gnration: We are here in Gerês, can you walk us through what you’re doing in this remote area?

Davor Sanvincenti: I'm continuing my sound research and field recording investigations about sounds that are barely hearable to humans. I constructed these ambisonic sound traps to be placed in the natural areas of the Gerês Natural Park. The park is inhabited by wild animals, living freely, and I'm trying to record their movements via camera photo, video trap and sound trap.
Once per week, I'm collecting sounds and video images to track the behaviour and movements of the animals inhabiting this zone. The area is mostly inhabited by deer, eagles, snakes and wolves, which is the major predator, and I'm following the paths of these animals to track their behaviour, see how they feed themselves and how they are moving without human presence.

Today, after two and a half weeks of recording, I’m taking down the equipment to see the material I’ve collected. I saw some actions happening, mostly by a group of deer, a single one happening during the night because they are moving mostly during the night to not be visible to other predators.

gnration: You’ll be back here in the autumn, why is it important to record in two different seasons?

Davor Sanvincenti: I tracked the movements of the animals in the spring season. This is the first part of the residency, and I will be back in September and October, to track different movements in a different season. In the Autumn I will again be monitoring the wildlife for two or three weeks, maybe in this location but I will also change the locations and we'll see. There will be a new investigation, new sites and different dynamics of movement of the wild creatures in Gerês Natural Park.

gnration: The ambisonic traps you made, do they interfere in any way with the wildlife, how does it work?

Davor Sanvincenti: The intention is to make it as non-invasive as possible to record the natural life of wild animals. The ambitrap system is used to record sound and the ambisonic sound of wild animals. It's composed of a system of batteries, a mic – an ambisonic mic – a Raspberry Pi, Arduino and a remote internet connection to track it down. You can monitor what's happening just by the sound and remotely download it, but mostly it’s important to know that the machine is functioning.