In this work issues of migration, and the acquisition of language are investigated. This was the first project where I explored, explicitly, taxonomy and the paradigms involved with the ordering of information, especially with regard to ideas about national identity and inclusion/exclusion.

I am concerned with the human impulse to categorise, draw borders—local, regional and state—and ascribe names to things (animal, vegetable, mineral) and places. As part of this process, there is a discernible need to pin down ideas and conventions of ‘what belongs where’. Obviously, bird populations make no reference to human ideas of ‘naming and taming’ geographies.

How to Speak…:  is an Artist’s Book and Audio-work designed to be read and listened to simultaneously. I hybridised selected information found in ornithological field guides, and language learning materials. These hybrid sources were subsequently filtered through Text-to-Speech software. I wanted to find out; what happens when the sounds made by a bird, are translated into words on a page that are (through grammatical and linguistic conventions) spoken [or mimicked] through the biological apparatus of the human voice? I asked myself, do such translations really help? And what happens when the voice that is made to speak the 'alien' calls of wildlife is not the physical human voice but a pre-programmed computer re-creation of the English speaking human voice? 

How To Speak… The Breeding Birds of the United Kingdom uses English ‘Text to Speech' software, which in 2000 when the work was made failed to pronounce certain words or phrases as they appeared 'conventionally' in written language. By necessity these words had to be ‘mis-spelt’ and phrases differently punctuated in order to be 'correctly' pronounced by a computer voice (albeit in the case of the software used, one with a North American accent). This produced a ‘hybrid’ lexicon and prompted a further series of questions:

Is what we hear and read an entirely new version of 'English', determined by the grammatical requirements of a piece of software?

What are the boundaries of language difference and how are these negotiated within a single language?

What happens when linguistic relationships between different human languages, and inter-species oral communications are explored?

Guided by such questions, it might also be asked, when is a bird designated, for instance, a ‘British bird’ and what conventions determine this categorisation? How to Speak…:, therefore, raises wider questions relating to migration and more specifically immigration and national identity—questions that resonate, perhaps, even more so now than they did in 2000. The work already pre-designates a narrowed group within the range of [Avian] inhabitants of a given area, eliminating from the equation many species and sub-species that reside in and visit, but do not procreate within the land designated by its human inhabitants as the British Isles. 

It is clear that an exercise in language-learning, based on the intellectual enquiry of the human mind and (limited) capabilities of the human voice but using the songs and calls [or words and phrases] of 191 different species of bird is a futile act. The absurdity of learning to speak and/or recognise these songs and calls from digital recreations of audible sounds, recorded in written form and spoken by a computer generated voice, extends the paradoxes involved with such an exercise. In this work, meanings ascribed to birdsong through biological research and observations cannot fail to be lost in translation.