Virtual Birdsongs
To create The Birds of America-one of our nation's earliest accomplishments in printing, the visual arts and natural history-James J. Audubon spent years crouched in bushes, fields and wetlands of the 19th century frontier. He'd sketch silently, then return to his studio to create watercolors of double-elephant folio size (way larger than any laptop) from which he'd derive plates. Many of the original paintings survive today, but are so sensitive to light that the New York Historical Society-which owns the best collection-lets each work be exhibited only once every 10 years. Forty of them are on display through May 7, capturing with startling detail birds in their native settings, at such everyday acts as protecting their young, building nests, billing and cooing.
A trained musician with a sensitive ear, Audubon described the birds' calls in his field notes, but (dying in 1851) had no other medium in which to represent their sounds. No doubt he would have adored the three dimensional sound installation that composer and audio designer Charlie Morrow created for the N-YHS exhibition Audubon's Aviary.
"We've got birds coming up from the floors, through the walls and moving over the audience in their actual flight patterns," says Morrow. Using 30 to 60 second samples of recordings from Cornell University's ornithology lab, he devised software that randomized bits of birdsong for playback-so they aren't mechanically repetitive-and invented a "sound thermometer" to adjust volume depending on ambiance noise levels in the exhibit's gallery.
"The most dramatic sound is the whooping cranes," he explains, "but there are a lot of little gems, like the call of the dickcissel. That name is onomatopoetic: Its call is just that." See the Audubon watercolor, hear Morrow's audio depiction-you're virtually in the park, up a tree.