MONTREAL — In nature, the chirps of the Australian zebra finch are pleasant and relaxing. At the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts right now, the same birds seem to be drawing inspiration from Jimmy Hendrix.
The exhibit “From Here to Ear” is the creation of French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.
For the next four months, an exhibit space in the museum has been turned into a massive musical aviary. The birds have been given special perches — 10 electric guitars and 4 electric basses. Each instrument is connected to an amp. When one of the birds touches a string, it produces music.
“Each guitar has its own chord. It’s open tuning. I decide for the chord. The adjustments are different,” Boursier-Mougenot told Global News.
He worked 10 hours a day, for a week and a half, arranging the space and preparing the instruments.
Using distortion, reverb and delay, the birds play a sort of music that sometimes sounds like the first couple of bars of Led Zeppelin tune.
“The day the birds came, we opened the small box in which they were travelling and they went directly onto the guitars,” Boursier-Mougenot said. “Because it was part of the environment. It was not something you introduced and made them scared.”
His work combines experimental music and visual arts. In 2013, for example, he set up a small pool with floating bowls in Melbourne, Australia.
This is the 19th time Boursier-Mougenot has set up an installation using birds and some sort of musical instrument. He said the inspiration came from when he was a boy looking at birds on a wire.
Visitors to the exhibit have an impact on the flight of the birds and, therefore, an influence on which instruments are played. But the space, Boursier-Mougenot insists, belongs to the birds.
Musicians may have an issue with one part of the exhibit: Boursier-Mougenot has given the birds some nice instruments.
They’re using four Gibson Thunderbird basses and 10 Gibson Les Paul guitars.
The museum cleans the space and the instruments each night. Seventy birds do make a mess.
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