Birdsong

Inspired by a photograph of birds perched on the wires of a street light, journalist and musician Jarbas Agnelli decided to write a song using the relative proximity of the birds as notes on a stave. "Birds on the Wires" is his musical interpretation of the picture. He says "Inspiration can come from anywhere, but we must be alert". You can follow Jarbas at http://twitter.com/jarbas_agnelli 

The video has received widespread attention, appearing on popular websites like Laughing Squid, Wired, and Gizmodo. Jarbas's friend, Sean Crownover (Candlegravity) from Tokyo, has also posted a version on his FaceBook page (player bottom left).

Link to original newspaper article (Portuguese)

Musical Data

I'm reminded of David Cope's ideas on the concept of musical recombinancy. In his "Experiments in Musical Intelligence" he argues that:

"...recombinancy appears everywhere as a natural evolutionary and creative process. All the great books in the English language, for example, are constructed from recombinations of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Similarly, most of the great works of Western art music exist as recombinations of the twelve pitches of the equal-tempered scale and their octave equivalents. The secret lies not in the invention of new letters or notes but in the subtlety and elegance of their recombination."

These "hidden structures" are present all around us, at the very core of sound creation in the natural world. For more on exploring the hidden data in nature see Evan Grant: Making sound visible through cymatics (YouTube video)