What is it Like to Be a Bird?
Thijs van Vuure |
TEDxAmsterdam
• November 2017
"Thijs van Vuure’s childhood dream was to become a bird. In his quest to fulfill this dream he started the project ‘What is it Like to Be a Bird?’. In this work, he explores the boundaries between bird-ness and human-ness, and how these seemingly uncrossable borders can be dissolved by simple permutations. He discovered that birds live 10 times faster than humans do. Their heart beats 10 times faster, they breath 10 times faster, their life cycle goes 10 times faster (after 1 year they are fertile, after 3 years middle-aged and after 7 years they die), and their behavior is 10 times faster.
Thijs took this as an indication that we can get closer to bird-ness when we slow birds down by 10 times. He did this with their songs, and by this, the slowed down songs reached the frequencies of the human voice. He started to imitate these slowed down songs and made recordings of his voice. When he sped up these recordings (or birdified them as he calls it) he noticed something incredible: the sound was exactly like the song of the bird he started with! When he played the sound back to birds, they responded and started to fly over his head. His dream had come true. To share this with the world, he built a human-size birdhouse; an installation where visitors can birdify themselves. This installation has toured all over the Netherlands and has been exhibited at various festivals and events.
Specially for TEDxAmsterdam, Thijs will do an experiment with the audience: Through bird-song the entire audience will become one collective bird."