The Auguries - Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Brooklyn Botanic Garden Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Birdhouses

The Auguries

Andy Holden
Cast resin from 3D prints created from audio waveforms
23 in. × 15 in. × 11 in.
Visitor Center

A cloud-shaped platform with four small sculptures upon it, each in the shave of a sound waveform.
The Auguries birdhouse at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Structures that look like chess pieces on a marble palette in front of blossoming trees
Concept art by Andy Holden.

Artist Andy Holden decided to go beyond the birdhouse, creating instead a bird sculpture park. Inspired by some of world’s most endangered bird species, Holden took recordings of their songs and turned the waveforms into sculptures. Four of these sculptures stand on a platform, representing the songs of the South Island kōkako, the California condor, the slender billed curlew, and the Sulu hornbill. For Holden, The Auguries “preserves the song for the future and reminds us of the precarious condition of many of the birds we share the Earth with.”

  • A man in a suit jacket holding a book in a dark studio looks off to the right pensively

    Andy Holden (b. 1982, UK) is an Bedfordshire, UK–based artist whose works explore philosophical ideas through video, music, and sculpture. He has exhibited at MOCA Toronto and Tate Britain London; in 2017 he made a touring exhibition with Artangel in collaboration with his father, the ornithologist Peter Holden. His works with birds explore the relationship between mankind and the natural world.

    Artist website: andyholdenartist.com
    artangel.org.uk/project/natural-selection

Photo: Courtesy of Andy Holden

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