Tom (canine)

Canine Haiku: Yellow Ball is part of an ongoing series of experimental performances called Canine Haiku; interspecies new media projects in development that combine aesthetics and ethics to draw attention to intentionality and expressiveness of canines, which contributes to enhanced regard for other-than-human beings and our shared ecologies. In Canine Haiku, recorded vocals of Tom [canine collaborator], haiku poetry, and computational autonomous systems, propose depictions of canine, human, computer relational space. The project is informed by practices of Zen, Beat poetry, jazz and Japanese music, computational aesthetics, and scholarly research in critical animal studies and philosophy. During a performance, the custom software [made using Max/MSP] selects and plays a canine vocal track that, in real- time, triggers visual effects and sonic ‘instrument’ accompaniments based on expressive characteristics of Tom's voice. Accompanying video is available here: https://ecuad.arcabc.ca/islandora/object/ecuad:16863