Birdsong

Research and design project | 2 week timescale | Role: Researcher and Designer

Brief:

Design a way that enables people to experience and interact with birdsong more profoundly, in an urban environment.

But what does ‘profoundly’ mean here? Actively listening to birdsong can be a profound activity by itself, or so we thought, until we realised we were hearing birdsong at all times of the day and night.

Research Strategy:

- Listen to what birdsong is happening in an urban environment (Soundwalking)
- Physical prototyping of what has been heard
- Consult experts (via research papers)

Exploratory Research

Soundwalking is just as you would imagine. Take a recording device, and listen to the sounds as you walk through different areas.

It does come into question what classifies as urban, so each of us took a patch of different 'urban' space to explore.

Once we had these sounds collected, we noticed the wide variety of birdsong, and our responses to these were varied. We played with the different textures of sound, both in drawing and textiles.

Top right: Lower Cross Wood Lane, location of an soundwalk. Middle right: sketching sounds. Bottom right: Physicalising sounds.

Left: Classmate Jakob eating a birdsong sandwich.

Secondary Research

To ground ourselves with a theoretical backing, we investigated what was known about birdsong in urban areas; a significant theme evolved.

Research by Da Silva et al., (2014), (2015), and Da Jong (2015) taught us that artificial lighting in urban areas is causing birds to sing outside of their natural daily rhythms.

"Our results show that artificial night lighting, but not noise, leads to an earlier start of dawn singing in 5 out of 6 species." (Da Silva et al., 2014)

"For all species, onset and cessation of singing changed relative to sunrise and sunset with the progress of the season." (Da Silva et al., 2014)

"Our results support the hypothesis that artificial night lighting alters natural seasonal rhythms, independently of other effects of urbanization" (Da Silva et al., 2015)

"In this experimental study, we demonstrate for the first time dose dependent effects of artificial light at night on birds' daily activity patterns and melatonin levels." (De Jong et al., 2016)

With this in mind, we decided to bring this experience to life, first, by making a nest.

The building of a birds nest

Following our desk research, this project engaged an approach of 'researching by doing'. There was no human actor who could teach us how to make a nest, so instinct, and a few youtube videos of birds was all we had to go on.

We scavenged leaves, twigs, branches, dried spines, and wove them together. A number of times, it fell apart.

This active learning gave a new appreciation for the craft and skill that goes into nest making, and therefore, to the cause itself.

The experience

Reflection

For a short project, Birdsong became incredibly eye-opening for me.

As a group, we had passion and determination to turn our outrage of the destruction of the natural ways from research papers into a tangible experience.

Our breakthrough in achieving this came through in the discovery that the most simple of arrangements, paired with human curiosity, can provide waves of experience and sensory engagement.

The project successes came in the form of positive feedback from demo participants; and the challenges came from the limitation of a single week to complete, which didn't allow for participant testing and iterations of the nest design.

The development of the nest would have taken a few different forms:

Further research into different types of birds, birdsong, and urban places they can be heard, through both desk and in-person research, using first-hand audio recordings from different sites
A consideration from where this could live in the world. Does it deserve to be in a museum? Does it support a charity event? Could it be stumbled across in an urban park?
Further interrogation of people's responses: do they intuitively understand the message? How do they feel about this topic; what would they be more inclined to do now they're aware?