Strange Birds (2011)

In 1957, when conducting extra sensory perception trials with animals, a team of leading parapsychologists discovered that pigeons were able to determine the sexuality of humans through visual observation.

Pigeons correctly recognised a test participants’ sexual persuasion through a combination of identifying particular physiognomic cues and psychic ability.

Given the potential ramifications of this discovery at a time where non-heterosexuality was either illegal or condemned, the research wasn’t published or reported.

Strange Birds is an experimental polyvisual installation artwork that responds to this groundbreaking discovery from an enlightened contemporary perspective.

The work consists of a central film projection bracketed by interchanging slide projections and an accompanying audio soundtrack. The film is a reconstruction of a typical laboratory observational experiment between a study pigeon and a test participant. The synchronised ‘blinking’ slide projectors utilise the studies’ archival material, which articulate the gesture of an exchange in telepathic mental images transferred between projectors. This representational ‘minds eye’ of both pigeon and human create visual puns and palindromes. The soundtrack offers samples of archival recordings from interviews with scientists to test participant testimonials.

The title, Strange Birds is taken from Polari (a form of Cant slang often used in queer subculture, particularly active during times when homosexuality was criminalised) where the phrase ‘a strange bird’ suggested someone of peculiarity and/or indeterminable sexual preference.

Strange Birds publicly debuts this highly progressive social and scientific development for the first time, 55 years since its original hypothesis. It references the subtleties and shortcomings of perception in our analyses of others and how we assimilate visual information. It also illustrates through this human and avian encounter the innate characteristics of sexuality and ultimately, our human vulnerability in light of natural and evolutionary phenomena.