Birdclock 1
In this work I try to represent the collective trauma experienced during the pandemic. Instead of showing daily counts of COVID cases and deaths, I counted the presence of birds in a specific area of Mercer County, NJ. Each column represents a month of bird observations between March 2020 to February 2021, collected from one of the world’s largest biodiversity-related science projects, ebird.
I used the ancient technique, of tempera, to create the initial hues of color that represents each bird species. Using egg yokes from my favorite local sustainable farm I mixed natural organic pigments produced the same way as in ancient, medieval and Renaissance times.
After my paint strokes dried, I digitized each color to preserve various textures and tones so I could create consistent colors from month to month, to digitally generated each chart of bird observation data.
This artwork was presented in an art installation: a photograph was displayed along side a series of data charts representing bird observations of twelve native species from the Northeast of the United States. These are the same 12 birds included on a Ktischy and common wall clock which features a bird song for each hour of the day.
Initially these species were represented on a clock dial because of it’s wide spread presence in OUR habitat, now their display on A ticking-clock is a reminder of possible extinctions. Two-Thirds of North American Birds are estimated to be at Risk of Extinction due to Climate Change.
This work is a record of time. A moment in time. 2020. When a bird clock sang my isolation. Hour by hour.
In the context of a World Pandemic, The significant role of birds as an indicator species of climate change is intertwined with the ancient symbolism of birds as the guides of souls to the otherworld. In ancient Greece they were called PSYCOPOMPS.
This artwork based on citizen-collected-scientific-data is a visual interpretation of that which one day might no longer exist, As much as it is a visual representation of those who, since 2020, are no longer with us.
They now fly.
