ALEXANDRA DAISY GINSBERG

2019- ongoing

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

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 will unveil Machine Auguries: Umeå at Bildmuseet in Umeå, Sweden.

MACHINE AUGURIES: TOLEDO

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.

Trailer of 'Machine Auguries: Toledo', 2023. Filmed by Madhouse. Courtesy Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Ltd and Toledo Museum of Art.

CREDITS

Forthcoming: Machine Auguries: Umeå commissioned by Bildmuseet, Umeå.

Machine Auguries: Toledo commissioned by Toledo Museum of Art and Superblue.

Machine Auguries: London commissioned by Somerset House and A/D/O. With additional support from Faculty.

With special thanks to the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for their support of this artwork.

Machine Learning: Dr Przemek Witaszczyk

Sound Design: Aurelia Soundworks

Technical Direction: Louis Mustill of Artists & Engineers

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

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

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Trailer of 'Machine Auguries: Toledo', 2023. Filmed by Madhouse. Courtesy Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Ltd and Toledo Museum of Art.