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IN SEARCH OF MIRACULOUS
Parrot, infrared sensors,
microcontroller, computer
Documentation:
Single-channel HD video
https://youtu.be/2KnP63B11Ak
2020
In Search of Miraculous is an installation in which a parrot’s movements generate a four-channel sound field. Inside a transparent aviary, four infrared sensors register the bird’s activity. A microcontroller and sonification algorithm translate these detections into sound, turning movement into events the system can process. The sequence emerges through the interaction of the bird’s attraction and hesitation, sensor thresholds and programmed mappings. Authorship is distributed between a living subject and the apparatus observing it. The resulting sounds make the surveillance system’s operations audible, revealing how detection and interpretation organise an encounter. Bird, apparatus, space and audience form a weak feedback loop in which a temporary order takes shape. Each new movement can interrupt or redirect that order. The work explores how technical observation participates in the activity it records, and how a contingent pattern becomes recognisable as a composition through the decisions embedded in its sensing and processing system. //Fig. 21 Video excerpt