Protocol scope
Cultural protocolReveil as an annual long-running collaborative coordination for planetary listening at dawn on International Dawn Chorus Day.
Growing light poetic planetary protocols through participation in the open radio commons?
Poetic protocol: A designed community invitation to wake at dawn, listen in place, stream the soundscape and send poetic fragments (multilingual/ multimodal) as a shared encounter and as part of a global dawn.
Tech-embedded protocols Meshtastic mesh as resilient, low-power, open network for text that has protocol. Devices form a mesh network, relaying messages between nodes to extend range. Messages hop from device to device until they reach their destination (or don’t). The network is imperfect and changeable depending on who is connected: messages do not always arrive.
Aim
Grow planetary protocols by learning from nature (radio/birds) and entangling time × place × relation
collective listening ︎︎︎ transformations (texts) ︎︎︎ a poem authored with the dawn
Why?
Research references
Telegraphy & early radio experiments; communal agreement-structures, previous project Byzantium on birdsong & collective poetry; procedural art (Oulipo, Moholy-Nagy phone pictures, Yoko Ono instructions, all referenced in Primavera De Filippi’s presentation)
More info on the Meshtastic network
If using the Meshtastic devices:
As an early riser, why not walk to your listening spot with friend(s), and send messages during the two hour window between 6am and 8am?
The best way to learn is with others. Connect to the meshtastic community in Aotearoa:
Link up on signal with the Pōneke community
Join the NZ Meshtastic Discord
Visit the NZMC Facebook group
︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
Summer of Protocols - community notes
Protocol draft V2.1 cf. Gitbook
Save the date - Reveil 2026, 3rd May, dawn
🐚️ Draft Testing - Notes from Community meeting
After the first live test, there were two clear needs for added instruction:
1. to help reduce the uncertainty about what to do
2. to give space for taking space, so people did not feel pressurised to use all their time writing texts
Technical Definitions
Is it useful to create a protocol guide for the poetic fragments that is crafted formally to strengthen the definitional character of what is emerging? Working with creative protocol needs to lead to messages that are in some sense recognisably connected ie. have clear choices, constraints and aesthetics that grant definition.
Hopping over the debate about whether ecological protocols were ever enough… can we experiment with creative protocols in ways that are informed by nature? ie. ecologically-informed protocols, in this case inspired by the native Tūī.
This work is conceived as a collective body of work authored by communities of the human and the more-than-human. The sustained community efforts of decades, restoring habitats that led to the return of native birds, show how longterm mutually held aims can lead to renewal and repair.
The prompts here are drafts, a start to thinking about eco-poetic protocols and provisional starting points for practice. The aim is to create space where protocol can evolve through community use and co-design.
The protocol borrows from concrete poetry, pushing beyond the limits of language and opening space for the body to be notated. Participants should not feel forced to translate their experience into words; silence, gesture, or symbol is welcome.
Within a simple structure of waking, listening, and signalling, there is room for interpretation and improvisation. Choices about where and how to sit, when to listen, and how to send messages are shaped by local knowledge and relations.
How can this work with the haiku structure?
Stress-test with community
The Tūī’s call, that conveys place and identity, has started to give the mesh texting some structured variation. The karanga, and other Maori forms of calling in Aotearoa share much in common with this structure, whether this resonance is generative can not be assumed: we need to test if this works well or feels inappropriate with collaborators.
Specificity / Complexity
Do we find different icons to distinguish between Tui, Kaka birdcall, for example? Or rely on onomatopoeia as more creative? If we invoke an “*” for the pause the listener takes to full-body listening (ie. undistrupted by texting), do we try for more phenomenological specificity? (Eg. Icons that distinguish between: Awareness of the body - Awareness of the sound world and the body - Awareness of the sound world, with no sense of the body.)
Whilst words may take away from the activity of listening, grappling with a complex key is magnitudes worse than articulating in a language already known. However, this struggle could be made a critical device. The imposition of a new language; the imposed lingua franca?
Documentation
The flowing verses can be presented - a long web page that combines map, photo, & spectrum that shifts from dark to light? something more ecological?
Evolution (replicability)
Formally, this is an evolution of Soundcamp’s Reveil (with permission from Sountent). Extending the audio streaming to mesh “streaming” with text. Perhaps systemic and open protocols can evolve over time as more people participate, and we can a few months before share the invitation with collaborators/ friends in Vanuatu, Japan, Indonesia, Hawaii. A Pacific invitation to redress the lack of streamers for Reveil in the Southern hemisphere? As we grow a poetic commons, we also grow fit-for-purpose disaster comms networks.
Collaboration brings together folk and communities with different levels of technological tolerance, and also different sensibilities and orientations.
Who to engage -
Designing the protocol means listening, acknowledging differences, cultivating resonances rather than enforcing uniformity; some are interested in disaster tech, some are interested in creative experiments.
Protocol scope
Cultural protocolReveil as an annual long-running collaborative coordination for planetary listening at dawn on International Dawn Chorus Day.
Growing light poetic planetary protocols through participation in the open radio commons?
Poetic protocol: A designed community invitation to wake at dawn, listen in place, stream the soundscape and send poetic fragments (multilingual/ multimodal) as a shared encounter and as part of a global dawn.
Tech-embedded protocols Meshtastic mesh as resilient, low-power, open network for text that has protocol. Devices form a mesh network, relaying messages between nodes to extend range. Messages hop from device to device until they reach their destination (or don’t). The network is imperfect and changeable depending on who is connected: messages do not always arrive.
Aim
Grow planetary protocols by learning from nature (radio/birds) and entangling time × place × relation
collective listening ︎︎︎ transformations (texts) ︎︎︎ a poem authored with the dawn
Why?
- Eco-poetic art practice - treating the environment as a whole - the Umwelt - the musical medium.
- Media ecology/Ecological monitoring - A (mediated) oral history of a living moment rather than the individual. (ie. not asking an individual human for their many experiences across a lifetime; asking a Place and space/time for its many simultanous experiences across space.)
- Practical readiness: Practicing neighbourly communion with resilient disaster-ready comms.
- Embodied/ecological connection: A meditative, receptive flash-mob.
Research references
Telegraphy & early radio experiments; communal agreement-structures, previous project Byzantium on birdsong & collective poetry; procedural art (Oulipo, Moholy-Nagy phone pictures, Yoko Ono instructions, all referenced in Primavera De Filippi’s presentation)
More info on the Meshtastic network
If using the Meshtastic devices:
- We will use the shared meshtastic channel
atahapara_mesh
As an early riser, why not walk to your listening spot with friend(s), and send messages during the two hour window between 6am and 8am?
- How-to guide to help you join the local mesh, written for SenseCAP t1000-e devices
- Our creative zine Meshes of the Ata Hapua for Reveil 2025 on ecological listening and the radio commons
- Haewai peer-to-peer book-sharing library on Inventaire.
The best way to learn is with others. Connect to the meshtastic community in Aotearoa:
Link up on signal with the Pōneke community
Join the NZ Meshtastic Discord
Visit the NZMC Facebook group
︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
Summer of Protocols - community notes
Protocol draft V2.1 cf. Gitbook
Save the date - Reveil 2026, 3rd May, dawn
🐚️ Draft Testing - Notes from Community meeting
After the first live test, there were two clear needs for added instruction:
1. to help reduce the uncertainty about what to do
2. to give space for taking space, so people did not feel pressurised to use all their time writing texts
Technical Definitions
Is it useful to create a protocol guide for the poetic fragments that is crafted formally to strengthen the definitional character of what is emerging? Working with creative protocol needs to lead to messages that are in some sense recognisably connected ie. have clear choices, constraints and aesthetics that grant definition.
Hopping over the debate about whether ecological protocols were ever enough… can we experiment with creative protocols in ways that are informed by nature? ie. ecologically-informed protocols, in this case inspired by the native Tūī.
This work is conceived as a collective body of work authored by communities of the human and the more-than-human. The sustained community efforts of decades, restoring habitats that led to the return of native birds, show how longterm mutually held aims can lead to renewal and repair.
The prompts here are drafts, a start to thinking about eco-poetic protocols and provisional starting points for practice. The aim is to create space where protocol can evolve through community use and co-design.
The protocol borrows from concrete poetry, pushing beyond the limits of language and opening space for the body to be notated. Participants should not feel forced to translate their experience into words; silence, gesture, or symbol is welcome.
Within a simple structure of waking, listening, and signalling, there is room for interpretation and improvisation. Choices about where and how to sit, when to listen, and how to send messages are shaped by local knowledge and relations.
How can this work with the haiku structure?
Stress-test with community
The Tūī’s call, that conveys place and identity, has started to give the mesh texting some structured variation. The karanga, and other Maori forms of calling in Aotearoa share much in common with this structure, whether this resonance is generative can not be assumed: we need to test if this works well or feels inappropriate with collaborators.
Specificity / Complexity
Do we find different icons to distinguish between Tui, Kaka birdcall, for example? Or rely on onomatopoeia as more creative? If we invoke an “*” for the pause the listener takes to full-body listening (ie. undistrupted by texting), do we try for more phenomenological specificity? (Eg. Icons that distinguish between: Awareness of the body - Awareness of the sound world and the body - Awareness of the sound world, with no sense of the body.)
Whilst words may take away from the activity of listening, grappling with a complex key is magnitudes worse than articulating in a language already known. However, this struggle could be made a critical device. The imposition of a new language; the imposed lingua franca?
Documentation
The flowing verses can be presented - a long web page that combines map, photo, & spectrum that shifts from dark to light? something more ecological?
Evolution (replicability)
Formally, this is an evolution of Soundcamp’s Reveil (with permission from Sountent). Extending the audio streaming to mesh “streaming” with text. Perhaps systemic and open protocols can evolve over time as more people participate, and we can a few months before share the invitation with collaborators/ friends in Vanuatu, Japan, Indonesia, Hawaii. A Pacific invitation to redress the lack of streamers for Reveil in the Southern hemisphere? As we grow a poetic commons, we also grow fit-for-purpose disaster comms networks.
Collaboration brings together folk and communities with different levels of technological tolerance, and also different sensibilities and orientations.
Who to engage -
- the Mesh crew in Welly, also the Critical Signals crew (related) - high-tech/expert
- Local town hall community (low-tech, sometims sceptical/wary of tech framing).
- Local school - interested but needs to be accessible & safety for kids planned for.
- The WGTN radio community (trained operators)
- Radio/music enthusiasts through local stations (experimental/may have no prior experience)
- Interested neighbours who may not identify with any organised community (varied, hold local knowledge)
Designing the protocol means listening, acknowledging differences, cultivating resonances rather than enforcing uniformity; some are interested in disaster tech, some are interested in creative experiments.
Research touchstones (for further study)
Bird call of the native Tūī ~ For many years, there were no Tūī (a native New Zealand bird) in Houghton Valley. Over the last decades, local regeneration efforts, like pest control and planting abundant native trees (flax, pohutukawa, etc.), have brought them home.
The Tūī is a long-range broadcaster call mixes (1) native vocalisations such as whistles, clicks, creaks, and bell-like tones; (2) mimetic elements that imitate other species or human noises; (3) non-linear features including overtones, growls, and rapid shifts; and (4) ultrasonic notes beyond the range of human hearing.
Haikai no renga, Edo period, 17th Century Japan ~ The collective practice of haikai no renga in Japan. Poets wrote verses that flowed on from each other. Eg. The haikai contest at the Sumida River in Edo in 1682. This collective practice developed the individuated haiku.
Haewai/Houghton Valley “Lifting the Creek” ~ Haewai / Houghton Valley once had a small creek, later buried beneath the rubbish dump of the city from the 1940s–70s. The stream, now underground, was rediscovered through community memory and research, it has inspired Lifting the Creek, a collective effort to re-establish surface water, wetlands, and ecological connection through walks, planting, and design.