Decoy

Decoy explores the entanglements between media technologies and relationships with nature. Through a combination of visual and auditory elements, the installation centers on imitative strategies used to represent birdsong. Devices such as automata organ pipes (in their attempts to mimic birdsong through acoustic means), and phonographs (later reproducing birdsong through loudspeakers) are staged performatively; the physical excitation of the organ pipes in water follows the spinning vinyl recordings in a reversal of their mechanical instrumentality. Evoking a perceptual decoy, these animating devices invite a broader reflection upon our fascination with the reproduction of nature and how notions of artificiality are indexically linked to our transforming media environments. From mechanical automata to “Hi-Fi” environmental recordings, there are recurring ways that the seemingly-miraculous nature of birdsong has been treated as a testing ground for the simulation of the natural world.