Soft Tongues

Land Acknowledgement

This research moves on the traditional homelands of the Guarani, Pankararé, and Pankararu peoples as well as on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Watututh, Musqueam, Yaqan Nukiy, Secwépemc, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Tsawwassen First Nations. I offer my gratitude to the hosts on whose lands I work and play.

About the Performance

Welcome to the cyberswamp! Adapting the staged performance of Soft tongues: a bioacoustic opera for increased audience immersivity using 4DSOUND, this work-in-progress spatial sound showing invites full swamp submersion as we listen episodically through the shapeshifting life (and afterlife) cycle of the frog.

Winner of the 2023 Robert Fleming prize for composition from Canada Council of the Arts, Jami Reimer’s sound and performance work interweaves solo and choral singing, text, and field recording practices in an ongoing and shifting investigation around chorusing—specifically, into the overlapping vocal terrains between humans and amphibians. Beginning in 2022 with a bioacoustic field residency undertaken in collaboration with the Amphibian Natural History Lab at the University of Campinas, Brazil, her project Soft tongues: a bioacoustic opera, plays with the science recording as a form of subjective listening. Jami works with sound catalogues of extinct frogs, creates recordings of remaining wetland choruses, and composes immersive listening experiences inflected by mythological songs, speculative soundscapes, and ‘eavesdropped’ science recordings. Soft tongues: a bioacoustic opera interrogates the relational, adhesive, and compounding qualities of voice, and the listening that tethers it.

Jami will also be sharing a first iteration of a new work, WET! (Webbed Exclusive Technology) composed out of 2024 field recording ventures to wetland regions throughout British Columbia. The electronic-noise-soundscape four track field guide EP moves from Galiano Island to the Creston Valley, the Squamish Estuary, and finally to Thompson-Nicola Valley in sonic pursuit of threatened amphibian species, wetland birds, insects, and nerdy ecologists!

Lobe studio is a spatial sound listening environment with omnidirectional speakers and a vibratory floor surrounding the audience from all sides. The audience can expect to sit or lie down for two thirty minute listening sessions with an intermission between. The room can be highly stimulating! While both compositions become quite loud, note that WET! includes some harsh noise which may be intense for some listeners. Earplugs will be made available for comfort.

Photos by Taha Nejad

Meet the Crew

“I’m an interdisicplinary performance maker, composer, and educator from Winnipeg, Canada on Treaty 1 territory. From choral music to field recording practices, I’m preoccupied with the conjoining potentials of voice, turning to choruses as a model and metaphor for conceptualising how voices sound out living networks. In my current research with frog mating choruses, I listen for the vocal artefacts that emerge between frogs, humans, and recording technologies within the sonic practices of bioacoustics. Voice is at once a philosophical playground as well as my favourite instrument to sing!

When I’m not field recording or writing or composing about amphibians you can find me working in a range of collaborations from musical theatre to composing for dance and film. I teach choir, performing arts, and experimental sound workshops in schools between Canada and Switzerland. I hold a Bachelor of Music from Canadian Mennonite University, a Bachelor of Education from University of Manitoba, and a Master of Fine Arts from the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. I currently reside on the stolen ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations known as Vancouver.” – Jami Reimer

Production Team

Composition, field recordings: Jami Reimer
Lighting design: Alexandra Caprara
Set/upholstery design: Hannah Kirkham and Jami Reimer

Addtional Credits and Thank Yous

Research acknowledgements for Soft tongues

Thanks to the Amphibian Natural History lab under Dr. Felipe Toledo at the University of Campinas, Brazil
Scientist voices heard in Soft tongues: Joelma Prado, Joao Pedro Bovolon, Jeanie Soula

I gratefully acknowledge the amphibians whose voices joined in this work. Members of the following extant species can be heard in Soft tongues

Dendroposophous minutos
Dendroposophous nanos
Boana faber
Boana albopunctata
Adenomera marmorata
Recorded by Jami Reimer in Atlantic Forest, Brazil (with the support of Joelma Prado, Joao Pedro Bovolon, and Jeanie Soula)

I gratefully acknowledge the endangered and extinct amphibians whose voices joined in this work. Members of the following endangered and extinct species can be heard in the sound score:

Ischnocnema garcia
Holoaden bradei
Rhinella casconi
Boana cymbalum
Hylodes magalhaesi
Physalaemus soaresi
Pithecopus rusticus
Chiasmocleis alagoana
Thoropa lutzi
Sphaenorhynchus cammaeus

Accessed via the Fonoteca Neotropical Jacques Viellard and heard in the final section of the work (with the archival support of Simone Dena and Felipe Toledo). All species were recorded in Brazil.

Research acknowledgements for WET!:

Scientist voices heard in WET!: Kendall McLaughlin, Jillian Reimer, Bill!
Field assistants: Jillian Reimer and Ulysses Coppard
Thanks BC Marsh Monitoring Network Thompson-Nicola Valley
Thanks Empire of Dirt Residency, Creston BC
Thanks Active/Passive Performance Society Galiano Island, BC
Thanks Lobe spatial sound studio, Vancouver, BC

Thanks to Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding Soft tongues: a bioacoustic opera and to the Canada Council of the Arts for funding this research for funding WET!