Bird Watching (vertical 9:16 installation format)

Bird Watching is a 3D computer animation (loop) that presents images of birds. As a study of movement, the animation—manually created through 3D modelling and animation software—draws from close direct observation of real bird behaviour. The title highlights the iconic simulation of its subject, emphasising the virtuality of the bird representations. Borrowing the observational logic of nature documentation and everyday bird watching, the work gradually destabilizes the viewer’s perceptual trust in what at times appears familiar and believable. At once quiet, alien, melancholic, and gentle. Birds are encountered in daily life, particularly in urban environments. This work focuses on their movement, inviting sensitivity and attention to the bird’s subtle, familiar gestures. Throughout the animation, the virtual birds gradually deviate from typical behaviour, engaging in grotesque and unconventional acts—such as consuming seemingly inedible objects and navigating unexpected environments. In stark contrast to the hyper-anthropomorphic or science-fiction animations commonly seen in computer-generated media, these bird representations retain their avian behaviour despite being placed in atypical contexts. This approach replicates situations that, while peculiar, remain within the confines of the familiar. By unfolding gradually, the animation challenges the current trend of spectacle-driven, instantaneously generated images and videos made possible by rapidly evolving generative technologies. Unlike the endlessly reiterative mechanisms through which generative technologies operate, the artist paid careful attention to the minute movements of referenced birds. Detail and movement are carefully crafted, resisting the rapid automation of image-making. While the 3D animation techniques used in this work are still relatively new in the broader history of visual media, the exponential "progress" of emerging technologies has now rendered them almost anachronistic in comparison to generative artificial intelligence, which can instantly generate raster images. The title underscores the iconic simulation of its subject, emphasising the virtual representation of birds, whose likeness is captured computationally. The behaviour of Bird Watching’s birds thus both allegorises and challenges the prevailing currents of computer-generated animation, in which technological accelerationism has catalysed the mutation of the familiar into the strange. Yet, in doing so, it encourages the viewer to observe with a careful, incisive eye—attuned to the delicate, shifting boundary between representation and transformation. Indeed, Bird Watching asks what it means to speak of the provenance of images today: how do we distinguish an image modelled in 3D software whose origin both begins and ends in the darkness of virtuality, without ever passing through the world it appears to depict, from other virtual and synthetic modes of image-making?