City Songs: Birdsong in the built environment

Sonic installation with bookworks and performance - Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, 2008

“Listening to birdsong is an innocent act - man and nature entwined in the moment. But in the city the unnatural intervenes, strips back the innocence and overlays experience: the sparrow's song interspersed with a car alarm; the chaffinch's call enjoined by an over-revved motorcycle.

Noise is one of the constants of a city, as much a factor in the make up of the urban sprawl as the spaces we build and the places we inhabit.

 I am not a naturalist, I'm an urbanist, and recently I have come to believe that birdsong is part of the song of the city itself. The city sings back”.

 PL:ay Festival catalogue, 2008