Pablo Pi-CAW-so

As a group, we wanted to take inspiration from the superb lyrebird, which is a bird that can recreate any noise. That bird takes our language and turns it into their own. So, we wanted to take their language and translate it into ours, with the twist of making it into art. 

The reason we chose the superb lyrebird specifically is to lend credit to Olivia, who brought them up in my mention of parrots, prompting one of my group members to play audio of it imitating a chainsaw—that’s the moment its mystique and scientific wonders captured us. 

Our group ranged from using digital art platforms to create our art pieces to using simple pen and paper for others. We chose this way of art because it was influenced by Olivia, who had presented her work to us. We found her work to be really interesting, and got our idea when she told us about her favorite bird: the lyrebird. Because of the lyrebird, we thought about their sounds and decided making visual art of bird calls would help us connect with birds more.

As we worked on this project, it became apparent that it is easier to care about these birds when there is work put into understanding them, even in something as simple as trying to transcribe their language into something we can understand. Bird calls are something that’s constantly happening around us, but I hope this way people could pay attention to the many calls of even a single bird, and maybe even try to understand it themselves.