Output details

Blackbird-Menagerie

This output interrogates the process of taxidermy and uses the medium of fine art installation to experiment with museological convention. It is an interpretive piece, developed to challenge traditional ways of looking at animals – and of thinking about the ways they look at us.

In ‘Blackbird Menagerie’, an animal is presented as an active subject rather than the passive object of exhibition. Indeed, it seems to protest at the very processes that lead to its ultimate fate as an exhibit.

A blackbird stands on a stool facing a video recording of its own dissection, in preparation for the process of taxidermy. Just before its skin is cut open the bird is seen to shriek out in alarm. The elements of the work interact with each other: the video, the animatronic bird on the table and the sound track are all triggered by the arrival of the viewer in the gallery space.

‘Blackbird-Menagerie’ was developed with clockmaker Darren Cox at the National Museums of Scotland and cybernetician Richard Brown from the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. This interdisciplinary collaboration used new technologies along with traditional mechanical and taxidermic processes in order to give the animatronic bird the convincing impression of life. Miniature servos are attached to mechanical cams and tiny wires run down the legs to a power supply which is controlled by a computer control system so that at the moment in the video when the skin is cut, the bird is able to shriek.

This installation was exhibited in a group show, ‘The Animal Gaze’, curated by Rosemarie McGoldrick at Unit 2 Gallery, London in 2008. In January 2009 the show toured to the Plymouth City Museum and Gallery and Plymouth Arts Centre.