Artist and composer Robin Meier Wiratunga explores how humans, insects and machines think. Using tools borrowed from sound and science, he designs experiments featuring singing mosquitoes, synchronized fireflies, neural networks and pigeon musicians. In collaboration with specialists and laboratories, he combines artificial intelligence with animal intelligence to create music.
For the exhibition «The Mind-Body Problem», one discovery particularly caught his attention: birds dream. They dream in songs and melodies that they will sing a few days later. This scientific observation gave rise to a long artistic investigation conducted with neuroscientists from the PRN Evolving Language and a bird named B5. Together, they make these sound dreams audible. By comparing the brain activity of the bird when awake and asleep, an algorithm decodes and reconstructs fragments of its dreams.
But decoding an experience as intimate as a dream raises new questions: Can we really understand the subjective experience of a bird? How conscious are we in our own dreams? Could the states of consciousness during sleep be a territory shared between species?
Perhaps by dreaming, we can finally feel what it's like to be a bird.