The Alphabet

A Satin Bowerbird Collaboration

Bundanon April 2008

Abstract

This intervention was designed to draw out the creative interconnectivities between a male Satin Bowerbird (Ptilonorhyncus violaceus) and Homo sapiens. Previous studies have examined the complex behaviour of male bowerbirds in the building and decoration of bowers, and artists have been fascinated by their concern/obsession for objects as aesthetic ‘treasures’.

The 26 letters of the alphabet, cut from blue card and painted blue on the reverse, were scattered randomly in the garden of a painter, the late Arthur Boyd, which overlaid the territory of a male Satin Bowerbird. The ‘reading’ of the alphabet by the subject was recorded over a two week period, at the end of which over half of the alphabet had been collected to decorate his bower. Each letter corresponded to a word referencing a miniature essai. This strategy enabled the investigator to display a range of human knowledge in an effort to recognise convergences between fields as different as science, history, anthropology and literature, convergences revealed by play and research, poetry and the imagination. From this perspective, the experiment enquires why human culture threatens the future of so many other species, including birds, in case the subject ever asks why?