canaries in the coalmine, 2020

ENOUGH LOVE WILL OVERCOME YOUR FEAR

When COVID-19 sent humanity into quarantine, we all felt trapped and afraid. For this series, I put canaries in cages to express our collective experience of involuntary isolation and fear of the unknown. The diagrams that confine each bird are diagrams for would-be functional circuits, based on a decades-old schematic known as the canary doorbell. In other words, as physical circuits, the cages would produce bird-like electronic sounds.

Information on the classic canary doorbell circuit design:
http://www.tonyvanroon.com/oldwebsite/circ/canary.html

This series premiered on May 8th as part of the online exhibition, Art at a Time Like This, curated by  Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen.

Thank you to Huw Evans for providing me with photographs of canaries.