ongoing

Letterpress stereographs and generative sound installation

Across cultures and continents birds have been viewed as sacred message bearers and teachers. Moving between sky and earth, they not only communicate the future and warn of coming disasters, but also teach us important lessons about local ecosystems, announce changes in weather, and mark the shifting of seasons. Yet now one in eight bird species is threatened with extinction and nearly half of the populations of the world’s almost 10,000 described bird species are in decline.

Birding the Future explores both the environmental and cultural implications of this decline by focusing on birds as indicator species. The installation invites visitors to listen to endangered and extinct bird calls and to view visionary avian landscapes through stereographs.

Within each installation, calls of endangered birds are extracted to create Morse code messages based upon tales, stories, and poetry in which birds speak to humans. These are combined with calls of extinct birds, which act as a memory of the past and underscore technological reproduction as the only means to hear certain species. A real-time algorithm scales the projected extinction rate for the end of the century to the duration of a day of exhibition — the longer you stay the fewer birds you hear. The soundscape is paired with a series of stereographs which explore the landscape of human-bird encounters via imagery, poetry, data, and research. Popular from the mid-nineteenth century through to the early twentieth century, the stereoscope heightens perceptual awareness and provides a historical link to human impact on the environment.

For this exhibition Birding the Future created a new series specifically focused on bird-naming practices and conventions, also including calls of birds with onomatopoeic names.