a bird lesson
"a bird lesson" contemplates the motivation, meaning, implication, and potency of the "simulated nature" in a time featuring the increasingly blurry boundary between the virtual digital contexts and the tangible sensorial world we occupy with our bodies.
This project focuses on the making of digital bird effects as a case study of the concept of simulated nature. Starting with an investigation of when, where, how, and why the existing digital bird sounds are created and who makes them, this project is now creating a digital bird sound effect, using a bird whistle built from several steps of translations between the digital and the physical space using various digital fabrication methods.
This webpage presents some initial progress of this project. This project is also part of the artist's ongoing exploration of using a sculptural language to examine and articulate the interplay between the digital and the physical experiences in late capitalism.
In order to make the sound, the first step of this project is to make the object that makes the sound. Here on the left shows a work-in-progress bird whistle: from the 3D modeled bird to the 3D printed bird to the 3D scanned bird. This multi-translation between the digital and the physical intends to create a sound object oscillating between the two contexts, which then can also create a sound that travels in and through the liminal space.
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Huidi Xiang is an artist and researcher currently based in Brooklyn, New York, USA and somewhere online. In her practice, Huidi makes sculptural objects, installations, and systems to examine the spatial and temporal effects of inhabiting both virtual and physical worlds in late capitalism. By reimagining and reconstructing elements from different contexts, including on- and off-line, she creates works to construct a realm situating in between, intending to articulate the emerging politics and critical issues associated with the ever-expansive merging between the physical and the virtual, the real and the simulated, and the fact and the fiction.
