Dr Alex South
Postdoctoral Fellow, September 2024 - June 2025
Home Institution: University of St Andrews
I am a practising musician and scholar with research interests in the fields of ecomusicology, zoomusicology, biomusicology, animal communication, animal culture, and animal ethics. My interdisciplinary PhD (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland/University of St Andrews, 2024) combined practice-led research from an ecomusicological perspective with bioacoustical studies on the rhythmic variability of humpback whale song. I also hold an MA (Hons) in Philosophy (University of Glasgow) and an MMus in Clarinet Performance (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). I lecture on undergraduate music courses at the University of St Andrews and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. As a performer, I regularly play and record improvised and contemporary classical music with Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, Collective Endeavours, Ensemble Thing, and in numerous other formations. Compositions resulting from my doctoral research have been performed at festivals in the UK and abroad, and featured in CBC documentary ‘The Musical Animal’.
Project title: What are the ethical responsibilities of musicians as interspecies translators? An ecomusicology of pilot whale vocalizations
Whale songs are widely celebrated for their musicality and played a key role in environmental campaigns that led to the virtual cessation of commercial whaling in the 1980s. However, past and present 'whale music' inspired by or featuring field recordings frequently displays signs of anthropocentrism, with the ‘cetacean citations’ they contain either domesticated or exoticized as means to human ends.
In the current era of biodiversity collapse and climate crisis, with whales and dolphins facing mounting existential threats from warming seas, entanglement, ship strikes, persistent organic pollutants, and noise pollution, I claim that musicians and sound artists are again called on to use their powers of empathy and expression both to promote the interests of our 'alien kin' (Baptiste Morizot) and to re-engage/re-enchant their audiences with the more-than-human world. Further, I argue that the effort to reach these goals is best grounded on the rejection of human exceptionalism, and on the recognition of more-than-human diversity at species, population, and individual levels.
Whilst at IASH, I will direct ecomusicological attention to the complex vocalizations that mediate the multilevel matrilineal societies of long-finned pilot whales, combining musicological and bioacoustical analyses with practice-led creative research focused on new site-specific work. Starting from the assumption that the agency, subjectivity, and culture of other animals should be acknowledged by the human artists who come to act as interspecies 'translators' between them and the general public, I will explore the ethical responsibilities that follow.
Orcid ID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4223-1221
BlueSky: amsouth.bsky.social
Personal website: https://alexsouth.org