old Tech, new Tech (2015)

Group exhibition curated by Maddy Rosenberg at Central Booking, New York with Book Art Museum of Lodz, Alexandra Limpert, Alan Rosner, Marianne R. Petit, Aaron Beebe,  Katherine Jackson, Carol Salmanson, Patricia Olynyk, A.W. Quintela, Yael Brotman, Sophia Sobers, DOEprojekts, Trish Mackenzie, Claire Watkins, Brett Wallace, Benjamin Poynter, Lorin Roser, Nina Kuo, Catherine Clover

Birds of New York series
This series focuses on the sonic aspect of the Cornell Lab’s Merlin app, an app that uses citizen-science bird observations. For me, this easy access to the sounds of the birds is one of the key developments of this kind of portable technology – being able to identify the birds by sound as much as by sight in the field. My art practice is based on listening so it is an aspect I am particularly interested in. There is, however, a stress in all bird watching communities of not playing recorded bird song and calls in the field because it can be so disruptive.

With this conundrum in mind and in response to the theme of old technology, new technology the works use the phonetic words that are identified for bird calls from a traditional bird field guide - Jonathan Alderfer’s Field Guide to Birds of New York, National Geographic (2006) - and I apply these words to the songs and calls on the app, producing lengths of text that are, literally, transcriptions of the birds’ voices heard on the app. The artworks are a speculative, imaginative and unwieldy textual support for the app.

All four birds – American Redstart, Indigo Bunting, Magnolia Warbler and Red-Eyed Vireo - will be migrating south during the exhibition period and will be both audible and visible in Central Park during September and October.
See invitation

CENTRAL BOOKING
21 Ludlow St, New York, New York 10002
Opening Thursday 17 September 6pm-8pm
Exhibition runs 9 September – 1 November 2015

Something Old, Something New: An Exhibition Weds Technologies of Yesterday and Today review by Melissa Stern October 2015

Birds of New York - Magnolia Warbler
Digital Print
841x 594mm (33.1 in x 23.4 in)
Call recorded by: Wilbur L Hershberger. Location: New York, United States, May 1999
Recording sourced from Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Merlin app (2014)
Transcription made using Jonathan Alderfer’s Field Guide to Birds of New York, National Geographic 2006