Prrrip-Prrrip, Tseeeep!: the silence of birds’ eggs
Item
Title
Prrrip-Prrrip, Tseeeep!:
the silence of birds’ eggs
the silence of birds’ eggs
Is Part Of
Ornithology
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History
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Fine Art
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SA College of Music
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Centre for Curating the Archive
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Description
"Birds are highly vocal creatures, their songs sound everyday in almost every habitat, even our concrete cities. These calls have been likened to the human capacity for speech, yet the faculty of language has, for most of history, been described as solely ‘human.’ Language forms one of several traits deployed to uphold the constructed divide between human and non-human animals.
Oology – the collecting and documenting of wild bird eggs – was an obscure hobby and ‘science’ of the past. Collected eggs were pierced and ‘blown’ of their contents. The perfect shells, beautifully coloured with speckles and intricate patterns, were then placed in vast cabinet collections. Such a birds’ egg collection, collected in Southern Africa during the last half of the 20th century, forms the starting point of this exhibition.
Through exploring language and communication in birds, this exhibition aims to create an affective environment for re-evaluating the collecting practices of the past (with its ties to the Euro-Western, human-centered perspective), and for re-imagining current natural history collections. It also aims to … poo-too-eee poo-too-eee, pa-chip-chip-chip per chick-a-ree. Ka-ha, ka-ha, kuh-uk-uk-uk! caw-caw-caw-caw-koodle-yah, loooooo-eee! Pa-chip-chip-chip, per-chick-a-ree!"
Wall text of exhibition, Prrrip-Prrrip, Tseeeep!: the silence of birds’ eggs
Oology – the collecting and documenting of wild bird eggs – was an obscure hobby and ‘science’ of the past. Collected eggs were pierced and ‘blown’ of their contents. The perfect shells, beautifully coloured with speckles and intricate patterns, were then placed in vast cabinet collections. Such a birds’ egg collection, collected in Southern Africa during the last half of the 20th century, forms the starting point of this exhibition.
Through exploring language and communication in birds, this exhibition aims to create an affective environment for re-evaluating the collecting practices of the past (with its ties to the Euro-Western, human-centered perspective), and for re-imagining current natural history collections. It also aims to … poo-too-eee poo-too-eee, pa-chip-chip-chip per chick-a-ree. Ka-ha, ka-ha, kuh-uk-uk-uk! caw-caw-caw-caw-koodle-yah, loooooo-eee! Pa-chip-chip-chip, per-chick-a-ree!"
Wall text of exhibition, Prrrip-Prrrip, Tseeeep!: the silence of birds’ eggs
Creator
Melissa Waters
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Date Created
2018
Resonances
Peter Steyn
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Percy Fitzpatrick Institute of African Ornithology
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collection
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Honours in Curatorship
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object ecologies
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cabinet
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invisible
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Melissa Waters
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notebook
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Natalie Viruly
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communication
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language
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fieldtrips
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Working wih Museum Collections
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pattern recognition
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onomatopoeia
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redundancy
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medicine chest
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Type
Exhibition
Honours
Linked resources
Filter by property
Title | Alternate label | Class |
---|---|---|
Oology | Interactive Resource |