A mixed reality experience combining digitally rendered birds and algorithmic musical arrangement with the Yamaha Disklavier piano.
Peter Libbey, Art to Augment 12 Botanical Gardens Around the World, New York Times, July 2021
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Dawn Chorus Trailer
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Dawn Chorus is a musical augmented reality experience that delights viewers with holographic birds fluttering around a physical player piano. The virtual birds engulf their instrument, triggering a series of musical phrases with each moment of contact. Watercolors bloom across the surface of the piano, visualizing the sound waves that emanate from vibrating strings. As the birds flock around the viewer, a spatialized audio system matches their flight through flutes and bird calls.
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By using technology typically reserved for high-tech or military use, artist Sarah Meyohas reclaims bleeding-edge technology to create a playful and unexpected performance.
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Within the work, a single bird approaches the viewer and hovers, life-like, recognizing presence and inciting wonder. It then hurtles out of sight, landing onto the piano to release a digitized audiovisual radiance. Across soundscapes and technologies, Dawn Chorus simulates an immersive and winsome fantasy in which to emulate the physical world through the advancements of the digital.
Dawn Chorus has been presented at New Museum, New York City, 2019, and WestBund, Shanghai 2020. Commissioned public works have been installed in Times Square, New York City.
Dawn Chorus was produced in collaboration with Reese Donohue, Drew Brown, David Francois Moreau, Tarun Chitra, Georgios Cherouvim, Lillian Fang, and David Lobser.