Peter Mcilwain - Bird Child Spirit

Yering Station installation site, spring 2023.

Winner of the Yering Sculpture Award 2023

Bird Child Spirit is a public art sound installation that incorporates community engagement. It is designed to be presented in public spaces like bushland sites or gardens. The installation works well when people encounter it while out and about but it can also be a feature of an event like a festival.

The work is a multi-channel soundscape that is configured to interact with the acoustic properties of the installation site. By using vegetation to diffuse the sound, the experience is both sonic and spatial. Bird Child Spirit consists of hundreds of short recordings of children creatively making bird sounds that the artist has collected will working with families and schools. Together they make a soundscape that presents as a flock of birds but on closer listening are not. This prompts visitors to explore the idea of what bird sounds might mean in broader cultural contexts. Across time and culture the sounds of both birds and children are associated with the voices of angels or spirits.

Bird Child Spirit is delightful, beautiful and artistically rich and appeals to all demographic groups.

Selby 2022 photo Cathy Ronalds

Installation Details

Speakers for the installation are small and secured with plastic cable ties. In most cases the speakers are out of view and positioned out of reach of visitors (about 3.5m up). The speaker cable is light gauge and can be flown above the ground from tree to tree or buried under leaf litter. All cable runs to a centre equipment box which is secured with locking cable to a tree. The system requires power at a maximum distance of 50m. Installation takes about 10 hours (depending on the site) and deinstallation takes about 3 hours.

Sound level - the sites that are selected for the installation are away from residential buildings and from sources of noise (like freeways). The sound level on site is relative to a flock of birds and is set so that birds on site are equally audible.

The operation times for the installation are controlled by computer. Generally the installation runs for 3 to 4 weeks operating 8 minutes every 15 minutes, starting from 10 am to 5 pm.