Jinxy said in a previous post:
i suppose the SDE people put these birds there, i’m sure they pass by the same patch every day but they themselves dont even bother to ‘rescue’ the birds that have been toppled over or turned upside down… they are sure proud of their own work…
My reply to her was that the SDE people are indeed proud of their work, and I mean it sincerely.
The answer is roughly provided here in this Wikipedia entry on ‘Installation art’, but it’s a bit of an unwieldy read so I thought I’d just expound a bit on it myself.
Put simply, imagine a pure substance, say hydrogen.
If we introduce a oxygen to hydrogen by way of combustion, what happens?
We get a new substance, formed out of the combination of hydrogen and oxygen - water.
Can you say the water is any less ‘pure’ than the hydrogen or the oxygen atoms?
I don’t think so (I hope not, anyway) because the interactions of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms have merely created something else, different in status, but of no lesser value.
Similarly, imagine the initial positioning of the birds as a pure element.
What happens when one bird topples over?
The original configuration changes and you have something to say about what this configuration looks like now.
Two birds?
The new configuration changes again and perhaps gives room for more ideas.
If one bird gets stolen?
The configuration changes and you could make a comment, however nasty, about students from the NUS.
So my point is, dear Jinxy, is that my interpretation of the project is that the birds are a piece of installation art.
And any interactions with this art - be it environmental forces or theft from human greed - modifies the project to create more art, not take value away from it.
If the birds were to remain static and in their original position all the time, there would be no change, no dynamism - and that would be boring, no?
So don’t worry, I am shure there is a reason for why the SDE people have allowed the birds to have free rein in ‘exploring’ their own environment :)
