Name: Copenhagen Climate Sound Series #2: Sonic Agriculture
Start: 2025-11-04T14:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-11-04T16:00:00+01:00
Location: Læderstræde 20, 1201 Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen Climate Sound Series #2: Sonic Agriculture

The event is free to attend. Please sign up in advance here:
https://cape.ku.dk/eng/calendar/2025/sonic-agriculture/
Talk with Elodie F. Briefer (University of Copenhagen, Behavioural Ecology Group) and Katy Overstreet (University of Copenhagen, Centre for Sustainable Futures). Moderated by Kara Oehler (Institute for Climate Sound & Society).
In our second event for the Copenhagen Climate Sound Series, we are very excited to host Elodie F. Briefer and Katy Overstreet on the topic of Sonic Agriculture. Dr. Briefer has frequently been in the news since her groundbreaking work on translating pig grunts into actual emotions appeared in the DR documentary ‘Hvis Grise Kunne Tale’ [If Pigs Could Talk]. In years before the documentary, Dr. Briefer and a team of international researchers used thousands of audio recordings of pigs and designed an algorithm to decode whether an individual pig is experiencing a positive emotion (‘happy’ or ‘excited’), a negative one (‘scared’ or ‘stressed’) or somewhere in between. The recordings were collected in a wide range of situations encountered by commercial pigs, both positive and negative, from when they are born until their deaths.
When the study was published in 2022, Dr. Briefer said it demonstrated “that animal sounds provide great insight into their emotions. We also prove that an algorithm can be used to decode and understand the emotions of pigs, which is an important step towards improved animal welfare for livestock.”
At the time, there was even talk of an app for farmers “so farmers could listen to improve the welfare of their animals,” says Elodie Briefer. "We have trained the algorithm to decode pig grunts. Now, we need someone who wants to develop the algorithm into an app that farmers can use to improve the welfare of their animals.”
In her talk, Dr. Briefer will discuss developments in decoding emotions in animals in captivity. She’ll also dive into ways her lab at KU, the Behavioural Ecology Group, is using machine learning to listen in on the emotional states of other species like hedgehogs and goats, and using sound recording and AI for conservation.
We will also hear from Dr. Katy Overstreet from University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Sustainable Futures. Her current work examines the development of insect farming and eating as a pathway to “green protein” in Denmark. Following the simultaneous proliferation of insects on the farm and the loss of insects in the landscape, this project develops methods and concepts for working with human-insect encounters in Anthropocene landscapes.
The discussion will be moderated by Kara Oehler of the Institute for Climate Sound & Society.
About the Copenhagen Climate Sound Series
We are very excited to announce a new partnership with Institute for Climate Sound & Society at metaLAB Harvard, whose founder and executive director Kara Oehler is now based in Copenhagen. Our initial project together is the Copenhagen Climate Sound Series, a three-part event sequence hosted by Oehler that brings together pathbreaking scholars and artists working with sound, which has taken on an increasingly crucial role as a medium and research tool for understanding the impacts of climate change, and also as a way for people to engage with and listen to the nonhuman world, expanding our relationship to nature.
Combining the potential of new technologies like passive acoustic monitoring and AI with centuries of Indigenous knowledge and decades of work in fields such as bioacoustics, ecoacoustics, and sound studies, sound is being used to monitor species, support conservation justice, and explore new arenas of human and nonhuman relations. The series will feature pathbreaking leaders across these fields, including Joycelyn Longdon, Jana Winderen and Elodie F. Briefer.
About The Institute for Climate Sound & Society
The Institute for Climate Sound & Society (ICSS) brings together sound-based practices entangled with the climate crisis, offering new ways to sonically gather, analyze and represent data to understand changing ecosystems and decenter humans in public culture. The Institute for Climate Sound & Society supports this growing community and is engaged in innovative research, publishing, and gatherings with the mission to advance new forms of knowledge and expand research impact. We are based in Copenhagen and at the metaLAB at Harvard University.