Linda Jackson
Joanna Kane
Pauline Thomas
Blair Thompson
(click on an image to open a larger version in a new window)
Project Developed
'If I'm breathing, I'm singing'...
... is a multi media installation that resulted from a combination of ideas and happenstance. In November last year a friend asked me if I wanted to buy some knackered, dusty exotic birds in an auction, I did - so he bid. The sad dusty things with missing wings and dismembered heads spent the winter forlornly kicking around.
I had visited Hospitalfield before I applied for the residency, the memorial chapel particularly struck me. Entering the chapel is like participating in a scene from sleeping beauty. Dusty and cold its carvings of birds, animals and flowers are a celebration of nature that for most of the time are left in peace to sleep along with its occupants Patrick AlIen-Fraser and his wife Elizabeth Fraser, for whom the chapel was built. It feels like a building that is craving life and wishing for visits. Built 150 years ago at approximately the same time the collection of birds were being shot and stuffed in the Americas.
It was the perfect place to take the birds to find their voices. I asked everybody I met 'What would you do if you were absolutely free?' When you ask people such a question, they fall into types:
The instants - honest and direct, which is the most telling.
The considerers ~ who give measured thoughtful answers, or consider so hard they make
it impossible for themselves to answer.The wits - who give nothing away, but make you laugh, so are forgiven.
In my search for voices Frank Gilbert and some local singers in Arbroath were involved, which brought the piece to life. Before being set to music the answers were translated into Latin by Gordon Stewart, another local, it seamed appropriate to use Latin, the language of taxonomy and the church, to sing about freedom. To most people this made the words less understandable, allowing the sound alone to be experienced. I wanted to create a wall of sound from which individual notes and voices would emerge, a dawn chorus of human song. So the thought were not lost again I attached an English version of the answer etched in metal tag to each bird. This is their only form of ID as although I have identified most of them, I still know very little about them.
Like most people I have little or no idea what is actually happening inside a microchip, but I acknowledge the power of the little black box that we believe can do anything, with the help of a widget guru, Mike Collins, it can. My primary reason for using sound chips was aesthetic; creating an electronic trumpet that was individual for each bird and by displaying all the workings involved in the installation the 'magic' element has become a 'technological' element, something of 'now' in contrast to the age of the birds and building.
Combining the birds with microchips that amplify and switch the sound they produce, gives them an artificial life. I thought in the chapel this would be slightly Frankenstein, but its more ethereal, as if the birds are singing into the devices. Then again that is probably me just projecting more personality on them.
Outcomes
The installation at Arbroath Memorial Chapel was open to the public on Saturday 14th and Sun 15th of August 2004.
Response
Contact / Further Information
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