Copenhagen Climate Sound Series #2: Sonic Agriculture
Talk with Elodie F Briefer (University of Copenhagen, Behavioural Ecology Group). Hosted by Kara Oehler (Institute for Climate Sound & Society).
In our second event for the Copenhagen Climate Sound Series, we are very excited to host Elodie Briefer. Dr. Briefer has frequently been in the news since her groundbreaking work on translating pig grunts into actual emotions appeared in the DR documentary ‘Hvis Grise Kunne Tale’ [If Pigs Could Talk]. In years before the documentary, Dr. Briefer and a team of international researchers used thousands of audio recordings of pigs and designed an algorithm to decode whether an individual pig is experiencing a positive emotion (‘happy’ or ‘excited’), a negative one (‘scared’ or ‘stressed’) or somewhere in between. The recordings were collected in a wide range of situations encountered by commercial pigs, both positive and negative, from when they are born until their deaths.
When the study was published in 2022, Dr. Briefer said it demonstrated “that animal sounds provide great insight into their emotions. We also prove that an algorithm can be used to decode and understand the emotions of pigs, which is an important step towards improved animal welfare for livestock.”
At the time, there was even talk of an app for farmers “so farmers could listen to improve the welfare of their animals", says Elodie Briefer. "We have trained the algorithm to decode pig grunts. Now, we need someone who wants to develop the algorithm into an app that farmers can use to improve the welfare of their animals.”
In her talk, Dr. Briefer will discuss developments in decoding emotions in animals in captivity. She’ll also dive into ways her lab at KU, the Behavioural Ecology Group, is using machine learning to listen in on the emotional states of other species like hedgehogs and goats, and using sound recording and AI for conservation.
Other speakers will be joining this event and we will update with more information soon.
Bio
Elodie F. Briefer is an Associate Professor in vertebrate social behaviour, with over 20 years of experience in the field of animal behaviour and more particularly bioacoustics. She has been working on a wide range of species, from songbirds to ungulates, and has published > 75 peer-reviewed papers. Since 2019, she has been leading the Behavioural Ecology Group at the University of Copenhagen. Their main projects combine the topics of acoustic communication, emotions, and social networks, in order to understand how emotions influence communication, how emotions are transmitted between individuals and influence social relationships, and how acoustic communication affects social interactions. They are also very interested in how our research can be used to improve animal welfare and for conservation purposes.
About the Copenhagen Climate Sound Series
We are very excited to announce a new partnership with Institute for Climate Sound & Society at metaLAB Harvard, whose founder and executive director Kara Oehler is now based in Copenhagen. Our initial project together is the Copenhagen Climate Sound Series, a three-part event sequence hosted by Oehler that brings together pathbreaking scholars and artists working with sound, which has taken on an increasingly crucial role as a medium and research tool for understanding the impacts of climate change, and also as a way for people to engage with and listen to the non-human world, expanding our relationship to nature.
Combining the potential of new technologies like passive acoustic monitoring and AI with centuries of Indigenous knowledge and decades of work in fields such as bioacoustics, ecoacoustics, and sound studies, sound is being used to monitor species, support conservation justice, and explore new arenas of human and nonhuman relations. The series will feature pathbreaking leaders across fields, including Joycelyn Longdon, Jana Winderen and Elodie Mandel Briefer.