Viva Brighton April 2015 Issue #26

art
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Dawn Chorus
Marcus Coates’ zoomorphic project
Marcus Coates is an artist who likes pretending to
be an animal. He often wears headgear made from
stuffed animal heads, and performs in a trance. One
project saw him tied up at the top of a Scotch Pine,
to try and gauge a hawk’s-eye view of the world; in
another he was buried under the earth in a remote
field. The Guardian have called him an ‘urban shaman’;
the Sunday Times a ‘rural geek’.
“About 15 years ago I started getting interested
in the culture of birdsong,” he tells me, down the
phone. “I found out that it is part aggressive – birds
singing to defend their territory; and part romantic
– birds serenading potential mates.” He started
recording birdsong, then slowing it down on his
computer. “I realised that when the birdsong was
slowed down 16 times, the human voice was capable
of reproducing the sounds.” He filmed people
recreating the slowed-down sounds, then sped the
film up 16 times. The results sounded just like real
birdsong.
Next up he spent a week in woodland in Northumberland
with ‘world-renowned wildlife sound
recordist’ Jeff Sample, recording the dawn chorus,
between 3am and 9am, using 14 different microphones.
They picked the most interesting morning’s
chorus they’d recorded, featuring 19 different
species of birds, and Marcus set to work moving the
project into its next stage.
“I went to Bristol doing auditions with singers.
“Some birds, like the robin, require quite a tonal
range, and some improvisation, while others, like
the chiff chaff, are much simpler.” He chose a
number of adept singers, who practiced reproducing
the sounds until they were proficient, then picked
locations ‘in their natural habitat’ for filming. These
included the office, the bedroom, and the bath.
We are well used to seeing ‘anthropomorphic’
representations in culture: the resulting footage
represents the opposite. “The official term is
‘zoomorphic’” he explains. “Not only did the singers
sound exactly like birds, but they started to look like
them, too, with their sped-up fidgeting and breathing
patterns.”
The installation he has made of the recordings, with
19 screens featuring 19 different sped-up singers,
exactly replicating a section of that morning’s chorus,
has been touring art galleries since 2007, and
is being housed throughout the spring by Fabrica,
Brighton’s home for such large-scale experimental
art. To conclude our interview, I ask Marcus if he’s
ever played the human birdsong back to real birds,
to see their reaction. No, is the answer: that might
disturb their well-being. But perhaps one internet
pundit’s remark, in the comments section of a
YouTube clip of Dawn Chorus, is indicative of the
veracity of the sound: ‘My cat went mental.”
Alex Leith
Fabrica Gallery, 3rd April-24th May
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