GROUP ARTIST STATEMENT: 

Our project brings together the poetry of avian creatures and the ability to communicate their feelings, translating them into human language. With Wes recording the narration, Mara creating the cover art, Spenser producing the backing music, and Aiden editing the project. This division of labor allowed each of us to collaborate and delegate tasks suited to our creative strengths.  The actual project comes together as a collection of poetry written by each of us. Accompanied by music and unified with a piece of cover art.

Our fascination with the medium of poetry began when we learned that oftentimes, scientists struggle to communicate the necessity of research funding. In order to make birds meaningful to general audiences we realized we’d need to engage in storytelling to help humans empathize with birdkind.  The natural world is frequently exploited by capitalist oligarchs and sociopathic billionaires who brutally harvest non-renewable resources and pulverize natural habitats. Using music and poetry is something that we have all seen from the bird researchers that inspired us and we wanted to incorporate that in our piece. 

We had trouble figuring out the tonal theme. Some of us had the idea of making dark comedy poetry, while others in the group decided to try a theme that was more evocative. One particular person had the idea of doing a rap (because that’s essentially poetry with a backing beat, of course). Overall, we hope that this project portrays our diversity in thinking about birds and just life in general.