Heading South Into Town: Ipipipipipipip, Ah Yeah, Um, We're Gonna, Yeah, Ip

This chapter addresses the possibility of a shared language with common wild urban birds through attentive listening and sonic strategies that address animal voice, language, and interspecies communication. The chapter combines creative practice with exegesis: embedded in the text is a creative work that uses the medium of written language. Similar to a textual field recording, this work follows the motion of a journey from Melbourne’s suburban north to the center of the city, detailing a contingent interaction between people and birds through hearing, listening, voicing, speaking, reading, and languaging. The creative work is considered through a reflexive process and includes how artistic thinking can work with and through the current ecological crisis, as well as a discussion on what art offers.