Decoy

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. Through a combination of visual and auditory elements, this installation creates a surreal form of imitation to reproduce birdsong. Devices such as automata organ pipes (in their attempts to mimic birdsong through acoustic means), and phonographs (later reproducing field recordings through loudspeakers) are staged performatively. Mixing contrasting media technics from disparate eras, the physical excitation of the organ pipes in water receives its signals from a computer’s machine listening system, which listens to the spinning vinyl recordings in a reversal of their mechanical instrumentality. Reflecting on the power and lure of imitation, the work performs a perceptual decoy which highlights the ontological deception that arises from increasing machinic representations of the world.