Yannick : There is something attracting in what you say, because at the contrary of most of the people dealing with music and nature, you have a point of vue quite close to the Descarte's about animal-machines. And usually this is the devil for people interested with animals ! When you say you are not thinking about yourself when doing something, it is like you are a part of the system. So what is your role as a field recordist, as a composer and as someone who will provide listening to other people ?

Francisco : Ok. That's a good question. I think, I feel more like a filter of the world, out there there is this thing called "real world" which the more you work with it, the less you know what it is. This is really my completion right now. And because at the beginning when you start working with the real world, you use ways of grasping the world that are very standard, and that pretends to do certain goals that might not be your goals. Representation is one of them I think. And representation for me is a trap as a relation with the real world. Now, when you work very intensely with the real world, you find out that there are things that there are different ways of grasping  or trying to grasp, trying to extract or trying to relate with that world, that are really hard to define, because they don't have to do with those things, or don't have to do with those specific goals. And because of that you certainly become lost in that confrontation with the real world. To me, the more having work with the real world, the more it becomes a blur entity that is really hard to define. From the point of vue of phenomenology, the world becomes like something taht has some many possibilties and simultaneous possibilities that it is really describing that or trying to describe that it looks futile, like non-sense, non-useful for anything, any purpose. So you have to go with it in a way, with that flow, and then you have to try to see what are you capable of doing with that part that you can extract from the real world. So one thing that.. In what sense I became in a way... part of that I am interested into creating new worlds of experience out of that world. So it is never representation, it is more learning from the world, and then saying Ok, I can try to create a new world of experience that has some of the features, some of the special features, some of the perceptual feature of that world but it cannot be that real world, that is impossible. And I am not trying to do that. I am trying to learn from that, and say ok now, I will try to be... So I am really defending the idea of a creator as an artist as a creator. Which is the most appealing thing of being an artist, so I really want to create an entire world of experience that has learned from the real world, from little bits of the real world, because the real world has so many distinct things happening at the same time you know. So it has to do with that. And what I am doing the work in the studio or during the live performance, I am definetely becoming part of that. I like to wander around that world. And I am never sure why I took certain decisions, and what is my purpose during the live performance. And that is for me one of the most appealing things with working with sounds that don't have a... that intention of a representation, or a specific intention because many different people in an audience during the show for example will have completly different perception. I mean.. I am not the only one doing this of course, but that area of work with sound for me is the most appealing. So that aspect of creating this non-specific world full of possibility from a phenomenological point of vue, what you have created, and the other thing is I am very interested into creating an experience that leave someone, including myself, transformed after the experience. So for me it is very important that for example in a live performance that before and after the performance, the perception of the audience or one person in the audience of his own perception has been transformed even just a little bit you know, but has been an impact. I am very much interested into making an impact, not in the audience but also in myself, because it happens when I am doing the work in the studio and also during the live performances, and for me this is essential. That doesn't mean to have a very loud or.. but it means creating a very strong impact. For me this is very important, because I am tired of boring things in general. I think get bored with things in life is the worst thing that can happen. The worst of all [laughs]. And to tell you the truth I find a lot of the musics boring, and... It's totally my own personal subjective opinion and perception [laughs]. I am not talking of good music and bad music, but I find a lot of things a very very boring and....

Yannick : Going back and forth between making a sound and listening is the main point in the phenomenology aspect of doing music. In this kind of loop between doing and perceiving, you are trapped in this system, you don't have to think about it, you have to experience it. This is a game. This is exactly the situation when you are playing a game. When an animal is vocalizing, producing a sound, he listen the sounds, and with some species it is a similar kind of loop. Do you have any kind of consideration about animals producing sounds like a game or about animal aesthetics ?

Francisco : That's a very difficult question. Animal aesthetics is a very difficult question. Because it depends of the definition of aesthetics .What is aesthetics ? Depending how large the definition of aesthetics you make then...

Yannick : As large as possible !

Francisco : Yes but it depends if you start considering aesthetics as a human condition, as a human possibility or not, and then there is a lot of people thinking that it is not exclusive to the human, so.. You can put it in a way where you say do you think that animal enjoys a sound...

Yannick : No, I am not speaking about the emotionnal aspect. But much more into this perceptual loop : producing a sound, perceiving this sounds, transforming this sound, playing with this sound.

Francisco : All right, but an animal could do this only to improve its communication skills, to improve the way he's communicating. Birds can do that or animal do that when they are learning. So, you can have a loop like that for learning. And of course it depends of the reaction the environment, frogs do, I mean most animals do that in a learning process. So it can be something besides aesthetics, that follows that loops that kind of reaction, that kind of game. Same thing for how animals learn to do other things. Like walking, flying or whatever. They learn by a loop of reaction and they actualise reaction to the environment in many differents ways. Monkeys for example, their skills for moving in the branches in the trees are incredible and they learn those skills by interaction with the environment and by loops of actions and reactions so there is a lot of things that could work in that way beside of aesthetics. Aesthetics is a very specific thing, intention and reactions that of course happens to human when they are singing or whatever, and reacting, but that specific question for animals, if there is such a loop and the same intention that human have for aesthetics I don't think there is a possible answer to that. Because at the end you can speculate and you can show differents proofs of that and some people will prove that it is not clear I don't think that can be prooven.