2019- ongoing

Multi-channel sound installation with programmed light; London: 10 minutes, Toledo: 12 minutes.

Installation view of 'Machine Auguries: Umeå' (2025) at Bildmuseet, Umeå, 2025. Photo: Malin Grönborg. Courtesy of Bildmuseet.

Installation view of 'Machine Auguries: London' (2019) at Bildmuseet, Umeå, 2024. Photo: Malin Grönborg. Courtesy of Bildmuseet.

Installation view of 'Machine Auguries: Toledo' (2023) at Bildmuseet, Umeå, 2024. Photo: Malin Grönborg. Courtesy of Bildmuseet.

Machine Auguries is an expanding series of site-specific sound and light installations. Each iteration uses the songs of bird species that are iconic to a location to create a replica of its unique dawn chorus. Machine-generated birdsong is heard under an artificial sky, replicating the changing dawn light. The work offers an archival copy of a vanishing reality, but it is a false memory that reveals the impossibility of relying on technology to reproduce nature.

Originally commissioned for '24/7' at Somerset House in 2019, the inaugural edition reproduced the London dawn chorus. In 2023, the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, USA, commissioned Ginsberg to create Machine Auguries: Toledo. In January 2025, Ginsberg unveiled Machine Auguries: Umeå at Bildmuseet in Umeå, Sweden.

MACHINE AUGURIES: UMEÅ

Installation view of 'Machine Auguries: Umeå' (2025) at Bildmuseet, Umeå, 2025. Photo: Malin Grönborg. Courtesy of Bildmuseet.

The spring in Umeå ushers in melting snow and disappearing nights, as the sun begins to skirt closer and closer to the horizon. In the gallery, softly illuminated with the cold blue light of the early dawn, the bubbling sounds of black grouse are interrupted by the first solo of the Eurasian blackbird. As the sun rises over the room, the calls of song thrushes, lapwings, curlews and cranes are replaced by the songs of their AI-generated counterparts. When the chorus falls silent, we can no longer be sure what is real.

Working with local sound recordists, ornithologists, and sound archives, Ginsberg has collated field recordings of bird species iconic to this subarctic ecosystem in northern Sweden.

Capturing the experience of a place, Machine Auguries warns of our infatuation with technology at the expense of nature. It celebrates the uniqueness of ecosystems but reminds us of their interconnectedness, as bird species reappear across places. As this imperfect copy of the dawn is situated inside the gallery, Machine Auguries reminds us of the impossibility of recreating nature and the urgent need to protect it.

MACHINE AUGURIES: TOLEDO

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.

Installation view, 'Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg – Machine Auguries: Toledo', Toledo Museum of Art, 2023. © the artist. Photo: Madhouse.

 

Before sunrise, an American robin begins his solo with a warbling call. Other birds respond, together creating the dawn chorus: a back-and-forth that peaks thirty minutes before and after the sun emerges in the spring and early summer, as birds defend their territory and call for mates.

Machine Auguries: Toledo is a site-specific immersive installation that simulates a natural dawn chorus slowly taken over by artificial birds. This synthetic chorus is heard under an artificial sky that transports us from the deep blue of the predawn light in Toledo, Ohio, to the pinks and golds of the sunrise.

Drawing on the significance of the region’s location on various spring migration flyways, Machine Auguries: Toledo reflects on the decimation of bird populations caused by human action, from habitat loss to more insidious light and sound pollution. Critical to functioning ecosystems, birds are being forced to sing earlier, longer, louder or at higher pitches to communicate. But only those that can adapt will survive.

Working with local sound recordists, ornithologists, and Cornell University’s Macaulay Library, Ginsberg collated thousands of recordings of bird species iconic to Toledo to create datasets of their songs. These were used to train a generative adversarial network (GAN) – two neural networks that work in a “call and response”. Reflecting on how birds develop their song from each other; here the machine learns from the disappearing birds. As the chorus concludes, we can no longer be sure what is real. 

Machine Auguries: Toledo in The Art Newspaper.

Machine Auguries: London in The Guardian.