Like most Blackbirds Darkette had a liking for sultanas and grapes. When wanting one she perched on the birch tree besides my east window and called me in a gentle but persistent ‘chook’ note.
— Len Howard, Living with Birds (1956)
Description
Blackbirds navigate space multidirectionally, while human movement through urban environments is mostly flat or, at best, perpendicular. The structure supporting the audiovisual installation is a network of rods, echoing the architecture of a tree canopy. Ten speakers are arranged to correspond to the birds’ three-dimensional dwellings. The blackbird population in Cișmigiu is dense, so it is not unusual to hear several individuals calling from the same canopy, though they often chase one another away. The composition engages with notions of chronoreality and frequency sensitivity. Scientists measure temporal resolution through vision. The critical flicker frequency marks the point at which the eye can no longer distinguish separate flashes of light, instead perceiving a steady beam. For humans, this threshold is around 60 frames per second. For birds, it is higher, between 100 and 145 frames per second. This means that time runs more slowly for them than for us, shaping a distinct chronoreality, which is reflected in the slowdown of audio recordings. Just as temporal resolution defines experience, so does the range of visible wavelengths. Humans perceive light across three colour channels, between infrared and ultraviolet. Blackbirds, however, have four colour channels and a broader spectral sensitivity. They are thought to detect electromagnetic wavelengths from roughly 430 to 1000 THz, giving them access to colours invisible to humans, as we see only frequencies between 405 and 790 THz. Their perception of light radiation is therefore fundamentally different. We can only approximate what such a view might look like. The videos of movement between trees attempt one such translation. For humans, a female blackbird appears a muted brown, and a male uniformly black. Yet to themselves, their plumage may be vibrant, perhaps as striking as a parrot is to us.
Research
On the one hand, audio monitoring provides concrete data on the decline of biodiversity while being far less invasive than ringing. This method should be applied not only in the case of critically endangered species, but also in tracking the population numbers, behaviours, and migratory patterns of non-endangered species. At the same time, such explorations offer an opportunity to contribute to a cultural turn that values other beings in their own right and challenges the idea of human exceptionalism in favour of a world where more complex forms of cohabitation become possible. Listening to the songs of blackbirds in Cișmigiu Park was fascinating, as it allowed us to focus on a species that demonstrates artistic capacity through improvisation in the structure of its song-making. Before asking what blackbirds think or say, or how to interpret their songs as language, behaviour, or music, we must first ask how they perceive the world around them. The goal is not to highlight some exotic difference, but rather to bring their perspectives closer. Human bias often infiltrates observation, and to understand where scientific claims take root, we must also consider the history of how birds have been interpreted. In avian life, their abilities are often described as imitation, yet a careful observer recognises their remarkable capacity to play and create, not merely to mimic.
Outcomes
The artist and scientists from the Bucharest Biology Institute, initiated by curator Andrei Tudose of Marginal, within the framework of the Otherwise Residency programme, conducted a comparative field recording study on the potential of citizen participation in monitoring urban blackbirds. During the fieldwork, they exchanged valuable knowledge about blackbirds and other cohabitants of the urban environment. The outcomes are presented to the public through diverse formats that invite embodied engagement and foster a stronger sense of connection with urban blackbirds: sound installation, urban flash mob performance, artistic-educational geolocational soundwalk and sound archive on radio aporee.
Field recording archive
Unedited field recordings with residency diary notes on the radio aporee map. Please find multiple recordings from different seasons and various times of the day in a single location.
Geolocational soundwalk
The geolocational soundwalk guides pedestrians through twelve distinct scenes. Conceived not only as an artistic intervention but also as an educational tool for scientists to share their ornithological research with students and the wider public. On 10 October 2025, the artist, scientists, and audience members will come together to collaboratively perform a flash mob soundwalk in the cityscape.
Geolocational soundwalk on Echoes.xyz. Please install the application on your phone, connect Bluetooth headphones, and start the walk. Follow the audio instructions guiding you from Piața Revoluției (from a family of trees north of Monumentul lui Iuliu Maniu) to Cișmigiu Park (La Movilă). Avoid locking and unlocking your phone during the walk, as this may temporarily interrupt the sound. Study the route in advance so you can move without referring to your screen. If the sound stops, simply press the play button to continue. The soundwalk is available in Romanian and English.
Biographies
Andreea Ciobotă, a research assistant at the Institute of Biology Bucharest, is an ornithologist with a penchant for bioacoustics, blending birdsong, avian migration and system ecology in urban environments. She is a collaborator with the Romanian Ornithological Centre (COR), a long-time member of SURE (the Society for Urban Ecology) and URBICON (the Urban Birds Consortium). Her research centres around the idea that humans are not separate from but deeply embedded within ecosystems, moving from a human-centric view to one of interconnectedness and interdependence. This paradigm shift towards SES (socio-ecological systems), she pitches in at international conferences (from Portugal to Türkiye and Romania) and brought her and the team at COR 2nd prize for the poster competition at the Deltas&Wetlands International Symposium in 2024 with a presentation on swans dispersal and use of urban lakes for wintering. For her current research, she tunes into birdsongs (particularly blackbird song) to understand how they respond to the pressures of city life and what that may mean for the urban SES ensemble.
Mihaela Ciobotă – ornithologist and Research Assistant at the İnstitute of Biology Bucharest, she currently aims to uncover how cities shape the journeys of migratory songbirds while they navigate urban green areas as either avian hotspots or ecological traps. She has a PhD on Black Stork migration and ecology and tries to zero in on the links between ethological display and habitat of choice at man-managed ecosystems, the point where behavioural studies and conservation meet, remaining a keystone of her work. Sharing ideas at international conferences, workshops or media is geared by her conviction that scientific information, unless shared both with the research community and the general public, cannot grow and reach its goal of becoming a valid tool for practical, sustainable policies. Through collaborations with the Romanian Ornithological Centre (COR) and the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE), she aims to uphold the use of behavioural studies for diverse populations of avian taxa when drafting conservation strategies.
Ida Hiršenfelder (beepblip) is a Ljubljana-based sound artist interested in sound ecology and spatialisation, addressing themes such as the agency of non-organic others, non-human animal languages, and listening to the inaudible. She is a member of the Jata C group for bioacoustics and sound ecologies (2018–), the Clockwork Voltage community for modular synthesis (2022–), and the CENSE Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies (2022–). She frequently composes for contemporary dance, for which she received the Golden Lightning Award from the Bunker Institute for soundscape in the 2023/24 season.
Credits
Artist: Ida Hiršenfelder
Scientists: Andreea Ciobotă and Mihaela Ciobotă (Institutul de Biologie Bucuresti – Academia Romana)
Production: Marginal (Otherwise Residency)
Curator: Andrei Tudos
Co-production: Institutul de Biologie Bucuresti – Academia Romana
Adviser: Marian Zamfirescu (National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics, Bucharest)
Support: Administrația Fondului Cultural Național (Bucharest, RO) & ŠŠŠŠŠŠ | Institute for Spatial Music (Ljubljana, SI), Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB
Public access
Group show title: Soft Thresholds. Survival, Resistance, and Permeation in the More-Than-Human World
List of artists in the group show: Laura Cinti (UK), Sabina Suru (RO), Andreea Săsăran (RO), and Ida Hiršenfelder (SI) |
Venue: Atelier030202, Strada Sfânta Vineri 11 (Sala Noua TC), Bucharest (RO)
Duration of the exhibition: 9 October – 2 November 2025
Collective soundwalk: 10 October 2025, at 17:00. Meeting point Piața Revoluției (from a family of trees north of Monumentul lui Iuliu Maniu). A geolocational soundwalk is indefinitely accessible on Echoes.xyz app. Approximate duration is between 50 and 60 minutes, depending on the slowness of your listening.
A field recording diary is indefinitely accessible on radio aporee.
Still images from videos by Rebeca Pascenco.
Sources
Academic sources: Potier, Simon, Margaux Lieuvin, Michael Pfaff and Almut Kelber. “How fast can raptors see?”, Journal of Experimental Biology, Vol. 223 (2020), pp. 1–7. ||| Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge and Medford (MA): Polity Press. ||| Dabelsteen, Torben, “An analysis of the full song of the Blackbird ? Turdus merula with respect to message coding and adaptations for acoustic communication”, “Ornis Scandinavica”, Vol. 15: Copenhagen, 1984, pp. 227–239. ||| Wolffgramm , Jochen and Dietmar Todt. “Pattern and Time Specificity in Vocal Responses of Blackbirds Turdus merula L.”, Behaviour, Vol. 81, No. 2/4 (1982), pp. 264–286 ||| Tietze, Dieter Thomas, edit. Bird Species. How They Arise, Modify and Vanish, Basel: Natural History Museum Basel, 2018.
Literary sources: Howard, Len. 2025 (1956). Living with Birds. London: Penguin. ||| Smyth, Richard. 2020. An Indifference of Birds. Axminster: Uniformbooks.
About the Soft Thresholds exhibition
In a moment defined by the climate crisis and its profound ecological and social fractures, the notion of boundaries—be they disciplinary, perceptual, or physical—is undergoing a critical reevaluation. Soft Thresholds, the concluding exhibition of the Otherwise Residency, frames artistic and scientific inquiry not as separate domains, but as mutually permeable fields of knowledge creation. Questioning boundaries that often appear rigid and hard to breach, the exhibition explores the fragile balance between the relentless drive of human development and the intricate, self-sustaining logic of natural ecosystems.
Photos by Alina Usurelu / Marginal.ro
About Otherwise Residency
The Otherwise Residency is a process of co-creation – of shared fieldwork, lab time, studio research, and hybrid collaboration – where disciplinary roles remain fluid and open to restructuring. Over the course of an 8-week residency, artists and researchers work together to co-develop artistic projects in connection with scientific research. The Otherwise Residency is part of Marginal’s broader commitment to cultivating transdisciplinary infrastructures for cultural inquiry. Not just as a translator of concepts, but as a critical co-producer of knowledge. The residency foregrounds art as a liminal space of critical analysis and epistemological friction – one that complicates, resists, and sometimes reroutes our most stable paradigms of understanding.