Bird Sheet Music, for Long Night

Earlier this summer we helped put out a call for guitarists to play their part in the Biennial’s epic opener, a Crimson Grail. Now it falls upon us (almost literally) to put another call out to the city’s musicians…

Simply put - we want your bird shit.

This coming Long Night of the Biennial (next month, folks), Tate Liverpool, in conjunction with Environment artist, Kerry Morrison, will be presenting the world premiere of a made-in-Liverpool musical score. And it’s the sound of bird calls (of nature).

Commissioned by Tate Liverpool to coincide with their summer blockbuster exhibition, Turner Monet Twombly, Morrison has been exploring elements of our city’s ecosystem: in our parks as well as unofficial, unintentional wildlife habitats. The edgelands and brown fields of our restless city. And Bird Sheet music is her most exciting project yet. We think.

As well as documenting her findings in her ace tumblrs and blogs, over the next few weeks she’ll be turning her attention skywards, towards our avian activity – and capturing her findings in a curiously satisfying way.

A blank score - on a scale of that would scare even Vasily Petrenko – has been printed and is ready to be laid out in anticipation of notes sent from heaven. Or, more precisely, from shitting seagulls. Or crapping crows. Possibly pooing pied wagtails. Although that’s less likely.

The parcels dropped, by chance, by birds onto the sheets will represent musical notes. For the technically minded, a big fat splat will probably represent a semibreve. Splats with tails, we guess will be minims.

Hey, don’t ask us, we’re just the shit collectors.

Each splat on the score will be carefully recorded onto more manageably sized paper, and transposed into a new composition by Jon Hering, core member of the a.P.A.t.T collective, to be performed by the a.P.A.t.T orchestra.

And here’s where you come in.

If you’d like to be involved in the harnessing of the fundamental doings of our native birds and hear your garden visitors in a way that’s never been heard before then please get in touch ([email protected]) or contact Kerry Morrison direct. She’ll even deliver the score to your door if you live not too far away from the city centre.

Your, ahem, job, is to simply lay it under a tree, or washing line, or similar for a few days and collect it a few days later. Morrison’s found that birds usually only shit on things after they’ve accepted them for a day or two. Who doesn’t?

We can’t promise your birds will make it to boot camp. But we do know this: Autumn Watch is so last year. This October, it’s all about the Autumn Listen.

Bird Sheet Music
The Long Night of the Biennial
19th October, Tate Liverpool.