For World Listening Day, sound artist and composer Dana Reason will play piano inside a virtual world called FOXP2 created by interdisciplinary artist Melody Owen. She will specifically be reacting to the spatialized sound in the space which are the voices of Australian birds. The performance will be recorded on the evening before the 18th and represented in the world where it was recorded all day on the 18th as a playable recording – as well as on Youtube.
FOXP2 is a virtual world world with spatial sound and light triggered by avatar presence. The mesh is formed in the shape of the audio recordings of the bird song in the space and the edges of these architectural forms have bands of light which are audio activated. The mesh is made to emulate glass as a reference to visualizing the invisible realm of sound waveforms. The title of the world is a reference to a gene found in humans that has to do with our language abilities. The same gene is also found in other species like birds and bats.