Reveil 13 2nd/3rd May 2026
The Reveil 24+1 hour broadcast involves getting up early to listen to the dawn, and live streaming and listening to the dawn chorus with others around the planet. The weekend is timed with International Dawn Chorus day, which has been celebrated on the first Sunday of May since 1984.
This experiment invites connecting audio streaming and listening with writing observations and short poetic fragments to be shared on the IRC chat (webpage live during the event) or a local mesh network.eshes of the Ata Hāpara
︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
Notes towards an invitation-score as a poetic protocol for textual responses to listening to the sounds of the dawn.
All you have to do to participate in the Reveil - along with the birds, the creek, the distant peaks - is to go outside and listen. And, when the inspiration moves you, write or send a poetic fragment of your experience.
The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is live here during the broadcast: Reveil listen ~ connect
The texts can play with the constraints of the 228 character limits. They can be short, like bird calls.
Over the Summer months, we have been hosting workshops to learn about the valley here and to explore poetic forms, from Aotearoa, Vanuatu, for example, and the famous flowing verses of Japan, the Haikai no renga.
Below the community have created 4 prompts, inspired by the Aotearoa/New Zealand Tūī bird
Perhaps your dawn listening messages can contain:
1. Expressions of place, time and relation
︎︎︎Messages of where, when and who: markers of place, feeling, sensing, perceiving. Words that carry some of what you can hear, see, smell, taste, touch and feel, and the light and locality.
2. Onomatopoeic Mimicry
︎︎︎ Participants echo or approximate something heard in their soundscape. E.g. a non-human call (ka-kaaa!), a mechanical arc of plane taking off (whoooshhhh), the sea, the wind. cf. concrete poetry experiments
3. Non-linear fragments
︎︎︎ Dream shards still lingering from sleep, meta reflections, planetary tones cf. the Tūī’s overtones
4. Multidimensional messaging, apophatic icons
︎︎︎ Off-channel expression: experience on the margins, the gaps, pauses. Can we include something of that which cannot be said? Can we transcribe with icons, like a visual score? How do we communicate what is missing: the missing silence, the missing birdcalls, absent insect sounds and the quietening of the languages of dawn?
Ecological listening invitation
When listening, perhaps you may jot down...
Reveil 13 2nd/3rd May 2026
The Reveil 24+1 hour broadcast involves getting up early to listen to the dawn, and live streaming and listening to the dawn chorus with others around the planet. The weekend is timed with International Dawn Chorus day, which has been celebrated on the first Sunday of May since 1984.
This experiment invites connecting audio streaming and listening with writing observations and short poetic fragments to be shared on the IRC chat (webpage live during the event) or a local mesh network.eshes of the Ata Hāpara
︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
Meshes of the Ata Hāpara poetic protocol
Notes towards an invitation-score as a poetic protocol for textual responses to listening to the sounds of the dawn.
All you have to do to participate in the Reveil - along with the birds, the creek, the distant peaks - is to go outside and listen. And, when the inspiration moves you, write or send a poetic fragment of your experience.
The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is live here during the broadcast: Reveil listen ~ connect
- Messages are short (under 228 characters)
- Messages will appear as part of a small chorus with others sharing in different places
- Text fragments can be written in te reo Māori, english, or in any language you speak
- Icons can be used to stand for embodied states: eg. an “*” for embodied listening.
The texts can play with the constraints of the 228 character limits. They can be short, like bird calls.
Over the Summer months, we have been hosting workshops to learn about the valley here and to explore poetic forms, from Aotearoa, Vanuatu, for example, and the famous flowing verses of Japan, the Haikai no renga.
Below the community have created 4 prompts, inspired by the Aotearoa/New Zealand Tūī bird
Perhaps your dawn listening messages can contain:
1. Expressions of place, time and relation
︎︎︎Messages of where, when and who: markers of place, feeling, sensing, perceiving. Words that carry some of what you can hear, see, smell, taste, touch and feel, and the light and locality.
2. Onomatopoeic Mimicry
︎︎︎ Participants echo or approximate something heard in their soundscape. E.g. a non-human call (ka-kaaa!), a mechanical arc of plane taking off (whoooshhhh), the sea, the wind. cf. concrete poetry experiments
3. Non-linear fragments
︎︎︎ Dream shards still lingering from sleep, meta reflections, planetary tones cf. the Tūī’s overtones
4. Multidimensional messaging, apophatic icons
︎︎︎ Off-channel expression: experience on the margins, the gaps, pauses. Can we include something of that which cannot be said? Can we transcribe with icons, like a visual score? How do we communicate what is missing: the missing silence, the missing birdcalls, absent insect sounds and the quietening of the languages of dawn?
Ecological listening invitation
- Choose to listen in a place that you hope to grow relationship with.
- Ideally, listen in groups of two or more.
- A decentralised experiment: turning up when you wish and sending signals when you feel.
When listening, perhaps you may jot down...
- A sense of where you are
- The mountain or the river and the land you stand on
- The first bird call you hear
- The sounds of the city waking
- The quality of light
- The air: breezes or winds
- A feeling or image from a dream that lingers
- An asterix to convey you are listening with you whole-bodied attention
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.