ALEXANDRA DAISY GINSBERG

2019-ongoing

Multi-channel sound installation with programmed light, benches; 12mins.

Machine Auguries: Toledo commissioned by Toledo Museum of Art and Superblue.

Originally commissioned by Somerset House and A/D/O.
With additional support from Faculty and The Adonyeva Foundation

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse

Before sunrise, an American robin begins his solo with a warbling call. Other birds respond, together creating the dawn chorus: a back-and-forth that peaks thirty minutes before and after the sun emerges in the spring and early summer, as birds defend their territory and call for mates.

Light and sound pollution from our 24-hour urban lifestyle affects birds, who are singing earlier, louder, for longer, or at a higher pitch to communicate. But only those species that adapt survive. Machine Auguries questions how the city might sound with changing, homogenising, or diminishing bird populations.

Machine Auguries: Toledo is a site-specific immersive installation that creates a simulation of a natural dawn chorus that is slowly taken over by artificial birds. This chorus is heard under an artificial sky of suspended lighting that transports us from the deep blue of the predawn light in Toledo, Ohio, through to the pinks and golds of the sunrise.

Drawing on the significance of the region’s location on various spring migration flyways, Machine Auguries: Toledo reflects on the decimation of bird populations caused by human actions, from habitat loss to more insidious light and sound pollution. Birds, critical to functioning ecosystems, are being forced to sing earlier, longer, louder or at higher pitches to communicate. But only those that can adapt, survive.

Working with local sound recordists, ornithologists, and Cornell University’s Macaulay Library, Ginsberg collated thousands of recordings of bird species iconic to Toledo to create datasets of their songs. These were used to train a generative adversarial network (GAN) – two neural networks that work in a “call and response”. Reflecting on how birds develop their song from each other; here the machine learns from the disappearing birds. As the chorus concludes, we are no longer sure what is real.

Read more about the Toledo iteration here

Read more on the inaugural 2019 iteration exhibited at Somerset House here

CREDITS

Commissioned by Toledo Museum of Art and Superblue

With special thanks to the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for their support of this project.

Machine Learning: Dr Przemek Witaszczyk

Sound design: Chris Timpson (Aurelia Soundworks)

Production: Artists & Engineers

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse

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