Machine Auguries—Umeå
October 18, 2024–April 6, 2025
Bildmuseet unveils a new site-specific iteration of Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s sound and light installation Machine Auguries, this time set in Umeå in northern Sweden. Presented alongside the previous iterations from London and Toledo, these three artificial dawn choruses from different parts of the world invite the museum visitor to reflect on our relationship with nature.
With AI-generated birdsong heard under an artificial dawn sky, Machine Auguries warns of our infatuation with technology at the expense of nature. Using thousands of field recordings of birds, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg has trained a pair of neural networks to develop their synthetic birdsong in dialogue. In her immersive artwork, a real dawn chorus is slowly taken over by artificial song. As human actions decimate bird populations, the artist offers a false copy of the dawn.
For the first time, Bildmuseet brings together three choruses of Machine Auguries, each simulating the experience of a particular place and moment. The first was created in London, where – as in many big cities – light and sound pollution are forcing birds to sing earlier, longer, louder or at higher pitches. The second was commissioned for Toledo, Ohio, a city located on the spring migration flyways from South America to the colder northern climes. In January 2025, the new 12-minute site-specific Umeå chorus premieres. Working with local sound recordists, ornithologists, and sound archives, Ginsberg has collated field recordings of bird species iconic to this subarctic ecosystem in northern Sweden.
The spring in Umeå ushers in melting snow and disappearing nights, as the sun begins to skirt closer and closer to the horizon. In the gallery, softly illuminated with the cold blue light of the early dawn, the bubbling sounds of black grouse are interrupted by the first solo of the Eurasian blackbird. As the sun rises over the room, the calls of song thrushes, lapwings, curlews and cranes are replaced by the songs of their AI-generated counterparts. When the chorus falls silent, we can no longer be sure what is real.
Capturing the experience of a place, Machine Auguries is an expanding archive of vanishing local realities. This collection celebrates the uniqueness of ecosystems but reminds us of their interconnectedness, as bird species reappear across places. As these imperfect copies of the dawn are situated inside the gallery, Machine Auguries reminds us of the impossibility of recreating nature and the urgent need to protect it.
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (b. 1982) is a multidisciplinary artist based in London, examining humans’ fraught relationship with nature and technology. Her work has been shown worldwide, including at MoMA, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Royal Academy, London. She has a PhD from the Royal College of Art. In 2023, she won the S+T+ARTS Grand Prize – Artistic Exploration from the European Commission for her interspecies living artwork Pollinator Pathmaker. This is the artist’s first solo presentation in Sweden.
Machine Auguries, is the first of two exhibitions, developed with Curator Sarah Cook, at Bildmuseet which explore our future with AI technologies. The exhibition, which runs until April 6, 2025, is produced by Bildmuseet with support from Kempestiftelserna, the Arctic Centre at Umeå University and WASP-HS. Special thanks to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library for their support of this artwork.
Sarah Cook is UmArts WASP-HS Guest Professor at Bildmuseet and Umeå School of Architecture, supported by the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanities and Society (WASP-HS). She is Professor of Museum Studies at the University of Glasgow.
Events
Sunday, January 12, 2–2:30pm
Launching of Machine Auguries: Umeå. Speech by Museum director Katarina Pierre, followed by a conversation with evolutionary ecologist Keith Larson, Director, Arctic Centre, Umeå University.
Sunday, January 26, 2–3pm
Art in the Rise of AI. Artist Daniel Shanken, Postdoc at the Umeå School of Architecture, on how AI poses new challenges and methodological choices for art.
Sunday, February 9, 2–3pm
Fifty Years of Birdlife Evolution in the Umeå region. Ornithologist Christer Olsson on changes in migration patterns, bird populations and new species in Västerbotten.
Sunday, February 23, 2–3pm
Living by the Light. Katharina Wulff, Associate Professor of Chronobiology and Sleep at Umeå University, on how all living things adapt to the shifts in daylight.
