Bird Language

‘Bird Language’ explores the possibilities of artificial intelligence within the context of biosemiotics. In the work, artificial intelligence is looking for patterns within bird sounds to build a mathematical model of the structure of bird language. In the first stage of the project, the artist trained a neural network on the sounds of nightingales to create communication between non-human agents: birds and artificial intelligence. This is a metaphor for communication between nature and technology in which a human being is not necessary. The second stage of the project is the creation of an AI-translator from bird language to human language. AI reveals the language structure and lets us deconstruct the bird language into a series of phonemes, which we can use to build an AI-translator for interspecies communication. In this case AI is not only a mediator or interface between human beings and birds but rather an organ or full partner, semiotically active. It helps to understand bird's subjectivity through the language. The multichannel sound installation represents sound experiments from different stages of the project.

Title: Bird Language

Medium: Sound installation

Artist: Helena Nikonole

Year: 2020

Location: On display at Pedion tou Areos

Glossary: artificial intelligence (AI), neural network