Free as Birds: Human Voice, AI, Performative Migratory Identity, and Ecological Narratives

Prologue

A Bird’s Tale

“How can we, through human voices and machines’ imagination, sing birdsongs reimagined for the dispersed Anthropocene?”

Looking back on the past two years of my migration journey—a continuous exploration of the idea of home through diverse mediums, from the visual reconstruction of photography to sound, performance, and video—I feel I have begun to discover a new artistic language. In weaving together personal and collective visions of home, I have realized that regardless of place, circumstance, or language, we are all on a journey home. Like migratory birds, we travel parallel paths, individually but interconnected by shared imagination.

For now, I am a bird, and this is my narrative.

I was born in a dense forest, my first home—a warm sanctuary I would return to each year. But the last time I visited, it had vanished, reduced to a dusty wasteland. The air in my homeland grew oppressive, stifling my ability to sing freely. I longed to express myself but was told I could sing only prescribed songs of praise. Friends who sang differently were silenced, their wings clipped. The sounds of my homeland became monotonous and heavy.

To sing freely, I embarked on an adventure northward, seeking a new home. I had heard that the North was a utopia—a land of boundless forests, diverse songs, and unrestrained flight. When I finally arrived, the northern forests resembled the home I had imagined. However, this utopia revealed its challenges.
In the North, the forests, once symbols of boundless freedom, were steadily vanishing under the pressures of development and climate change. The vibrant diversity of bird songs I had hoped to find was overshadowed by a sense of isolation; my unfamiliar melodies struggled to harmonize with the established chorus. Despite my efforts, barriers—both visible and invisible—emerged, as towering walls and cultural expectations reminded me of my otherness.
However, in this fragmented utopia, I discovered something unexpected: a shared vulnerability and resilience among other migratory birds. Together, we carried memories of forests we had lost, songs we could no longer sing, and the hope of building new sanctuaries.

1

Project Overview

The long term project since the end of 2024 examines the parallel migratory journeys of birds and humans in the context of the Anthropocene, exploring themes of displacement, deforestation, and the search for a reimagined home through lens-based practices, AI-generated bird song interpretations, performance, and vocal experimentation.

As ecosystems destabilize and political crisis, birds lose habitats while immigrants face barriers and their homes cannot be returned to. Inspired by this shared fragility, I imagined myself as a bird on its way to finding a new homeland, wearing wings crafted from fragmented maps. I performed scenes set against natural backdrops: gazing at nests in trees, tracing water pathways guided by moonlight and stars, dancing with birds, and finally confronting the border—the stark divide between the freedom of birds and the restrictions imposed on human migration.

Using AI as language models, I translated the traditional Chinese folk songs about birds’ migration into bird-like vocal structures, echoing the mechanical and repetitive efforts of technology to understand complex human themes. The melodies composed with elements of Finnish vocalization—a language I am learning as a newcomer—were performed alongside symbolic field recordings. The slow, deliberate process of mastering this “new bird language” mirrors the immigrant experience of adapting to unfamiliar environments.

2

Birds as Symbol of Freedom

Growing up, I’ve always been drawn to birds. In my hometown—once known as a bird paradise due to its lush forests—I found countless ways to connect with them, albeit imaginatively. I mimicked their songs and crafted cardboard wings, dreaming of flight. Even today, birds continue to mesmerize me. I recall moments of awe: watching flocks of waxwings sweep across the cathedral in Vilnius at dusk, calling out to roosting crows during evenings at the Kalbe residency, or seeing migratory birds forming cryptic patterns in the skies over a southern Chinese coastline.

Birds frequently appear in a poetic expression in my work as well. In my earlier photography series in 2019, The Trajectory of Birds, I wrote, “Birds are like shadows freely moving through the atmosphere.”

My fascination with birds isn’t rooted in biological expertise—I can’t identify most species. Instead, it stems from humanity’s imaginative projection of meaning and emotion onto these creatures. Throughout history, birds have represented freedom in both Eastern and Western cultures, largely because of their ability to transcend physical boundaries by soaring into the skies. Additionally, their migrations often serve as metaphors for human displacement and the search for belonging.

Anthropomorphism, or attributing human traits to non-human beings, has been a powerful artistic tool for connecting with birds. For example, John Berginer’s Why Look at Animals? explores how animals are interpreted through human experience in art, shaping our relationship with them ¹ . Similarly, Lacan’s psychoanalytic ideas frame birds as mirrors of human aspiration ² . The film Birdy (1984) uses birds to convey trauma and the longing for liberation, reflecting human struggles through avian metaphors ³ .

Since beginning my migration from China to Finland, I’ve witnessed the deforestation wave spreading in Finland and attended activism against Finland’s deforestation. Simultaneously, the rise of nationalistic protectionism across Europe, tightening immigration policies, and increasing restrictions have made the freedom we seek feel more precarious than ever. These experiences inspired me to interweave my identity, migration journey, and ecological concerns with the imagery of bird migration and deforestation in my project, Free as Birds.

In Free as Birds, I begin by imagining myself as a bird migrating for the home it imagined.

3

Becoming the Bird

Icarus longed for the sky, crafting wings of wax to soar like a bird, only to fall when they melted under the sun.

I learned about this classic fable when I was young and have always been fascinated with it, which speaks to the dual narrative of human imagination and the harsh reality we face.

Wings of Fractured Maps

In creating Free as Birds, I constructed a fragile bird’s wing with the maps, symbolizing the vulnerability of hope and migration. I collected maps from my hometown in Huizhou, Guangdong, China, and along my journey to Finland, collecting maps of various scales all the way to Espoo, where I now reside. I printed these maps onto paper, cut them into the shape of feathers, and layered them onto a frame made of iron wire.

The use of fragmented maps to construct fragile wings reflects not just physical migration but also the layered meanings of maps themselves. Edward Said’s concept of “imagined geographies,” as introduced in Orientalism (1978), highlights how maps are imbued with power dynamics and narratives, shaping perceptions of borders and identities rather than presenting objective realities ⁴ . My choice to fragment maps into feathers disrupts their function as tools of control, instead reimagining them as symbols of movement and transformation.

From another perspective, the maps are a form of “the bird’s-eye view.” Tim Ingold argues that maps transform “everywhere-as-region,” the world as experienced by a mobile inhabitant, into “everywhere-as-space,” a detached, “bird’s-eye view” dictated by transcendent consciousness ⁵ . In this project, by cutting and reassembling maps, I reclaim the abstracted space and reattach it to the personal, the experiential, and the fragile—reflecting my journey across geographies not as static places but as interwoven lived realities.

I also used the maps to create the bird’s beak. Using unused masks from the pandemic as a template, I combined them with the maps to make a “bird’s beak.” This represents that special period when I left my homeland, a time of fear and lost freedom. The masks, which once censored us from singing songs of difference, are now cut open, allowing me to sing freely.

With the wings and beak made from maps, I began an imaginative performance where I became the bird.

In the early winter of Finland, I brought a tripod and camera to record my transformation into a bird seeking a home. I went to Suomenlinna, a landmark island in Helsinki with various natural landscapes, which allowed me to capture many metaphorical scenes of birds and migration.

The video opens with me closing my eyes and beginning the process of imagining. As I shut my eyes, I flashback through montages of birds flying—images I captured in Iceland, Poland, Finland, and China. I interspersed these with footage of the Baltic Sea, stretching deep into the ocean, symbolizing the beginning of a migration journey.

The video documents several metaphorical scenes and performances. At the start, I set off on a migration journey, tired yet full of hope, walking toward the unknown, gazing at nests in trees, imagining the existence of home, tracing water pathways like a bird’s migration route, searching for a path; when I reached a high hill, I entered a utopian fantasy. In these utopian moments, I imagine dancing and flying with birds, creating a surreal, almost sublime vision with countless birds appearing in a surreal manner.

However, the narrative shifts from hope to reality as the performance progresses. During the performance, the bird’s wings, which were made of maps, gradually disintegrated in the harsh weather.

In the final shot, I repeatedly attempt to cross an invisible border, just like the physical and psychological barriers migrants face. As I remained stuck, the flock of birds in the sky flew freely across the border, disappearing on the other side. My fantasy as a bird shattered, returning to reality—the illusion of freedom and belonging often promised but rarely delivered to displaced individuals.

During the performance, I started to truly feel like a bird. By placing myself in front of the camera, I embraced Amelia Jones’ theory of performative self-portraiture, which blurs the boundaries between artist, subject, and audience ⁶ . The freezing cold during filming was not just a backdrop but an active participant, grounding the performance in the reality of struggle and endurance.

Bird Songs and Society

Using birdsong to explore themes of migration, freedom, borders, and movement is a compelling artistic approach. Birdsong acts as a symbolic language, poetically or humorously reflecting language as an emblem of immigrant identity. For example, Robin Meier’s Apophenia fosters an imaginative collaboration between humans and nonhumans. His piece Song for Ghost Travelers (2015) features a musical ensemble of pigeons and musicians, blending traditional Chinese melodies with pigeon whistles tied to birds, creating a dynamic performance at a train station where birds and human travelers harmonize ⁷ .

Similarly, the Birdsong Initiative / Rome (2019) by Finnish artist Otto Karvonen, exhibited at the EMMA Museum in Espoo, presents a satirical exploration of language, migration, and nationalism. Inspired by anti-immigration propaganda, it proposes strict linguistic tests for migratory birds, requiring them to mimic the Italian sparrow’s song to obtain“residency permits.” ⁸ By humorously intertwining birds and humans, Karvonen critiques our nationalistic and exclusionary attitudes.

Historically, humans interacted with birds through experiential mimicry of their calls, as in Africa, where honeygatherers collaborate with honeyguides to locate bee nests. Modern science continues to explore birdsong, with linguist Moira Yip highlighting its structural parallels to human language, such as syllabic patterns and rhythmic emphasis ⁹ . Yet, decoding birds’ “language” remains elusive. AI and machine learning might offer new tools for interpretation, but true understanding or translation may remain a fantasy.

However, in artistic contexts, this apophenia—a tendency to find patterns and connections—elevates birdsong as a poetic symbol of freedom. Especially for those facing censorship or repression, it resonates as a profound metaphor for liberation and self-expression, making it a powerful motif in artistic expression.

Folk Songs and the AI’s Mechanical Imagining

“If all media is training data, including art, let’s turn the production of training data into art instead. ¹⁰ ” – Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst.

In creating Free as Birds, I started to explore an imaginative interpretation of bird songs and the human migration narratives, and the rapid evolution of AI language models caught my eye. Their dual nature—mechanical precision and anthropomorphic imagination- offer a refreshing point of view to understanding language learning barriers and the liminal spaces of a human-machine co-imagination.

For the original context of Bird Song, I chose different folk songs about birds and migration in various cultures, where the migration of birds and humans becomes a unified cultural symbol expressed in various ethnic folk traditions. For my first experiment, I selected Hong Yan (“Wild Geese”), a household Chinese Mongolian folk song that conveys the emotional landscape of leaving one’s homeland, symbolizing seeking for home and the displacement by the geese’s migration. And this song became increasingly meaningful to me after leaving my homeland.

I selected the lyrics from Hong Yan and input them into a dialogue with ChatGPT, an AI application based on a language model.
I instructed AI to translate its lyrics into “bird language.”: “Please translate the following text into bird song, incorporating the meaning of the text and the vocal habits of birds.”

Original Folk Song Lyrics
Wild geese soar in the sky, flying in rows side by side.
The river flows long, autumn grass turns yellow,
And the melody on the grassland carries sorrow.

Wild geese head south, gliding over the reed marsh.
The vast heavens stretch endlessly—where will the geese go?
In their hearts lies the homeland in the northern skies.

鸿雁天空上，对对排成行，江水长秋草黄，草原上琴声忧伤。 鸿雁向南方，飞过芦苇荡，天苍茫雁何往，心中是北方家乡.
- 吕燕卫《鸿
New Bird Language
Chiir-chiir koo-koo,
ki-ki ka-ka koo,
ri-ri laa chaa-rii,
chir chir waah hoo.

Waa-ka koo koo,
li-li cha-koo waah,
chir chir waa koo-ka,
ki-laa koo chir ka.

Explanation: “Chiir-chiir koo-koo” mimics the image of wild geese flying in pairs, using repeated short syllables. “ki-ki ka-ka koo” is used to depict the imagery of long rivers and yellow autumn grass, with a slow, lingering ending that conveys the essence of autumn. The syllable rhythm of “ri-ri laa chaa-rii” is slightly slower, conveying the vastness and remoteness of the grassland. “chir chir waah hoo” mimics the sorrow of the qin, with the elongated “hoo” conveying a sense of desolation.

“Waa-ka koo koo” mimics the process of the wild goose taking off southward, constructing the imagery of takeoff through gradually ascending syllables.“li-li cha-koo waah” expresses the image of flying over the reed marshes, using the lower-pitched “waah” to create a sense of desolation.“chir chir waa koo-ka” reflects the flight of the geese in confusion through repeated and slightly elongated syllables. “ki-laa koo chir ka” ends with a relatively low-pitched syllable “ka,” conveying a sense of longing for the northern homeland.

The fragmented, mechanical outputs—while limited—embody poetic resonances. They reveal an abstract yet emotionally charged reinterpretation of human experiences, filtered through AI’s algorithmic framework.

What surprised me was that AI is trying to understand human emotions using machine learning and language models—AI is also “imagining.”

Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto offers a lens for this hybridized identity. By merging human cultural memory (folk songs) with AI-generated bird mimicry, this experiment embodies posthuman ideals: a synthesis of human, nonhuman, and machine ¹¹ . AI, as a tool, provides an imaginative mechanism for “translation.”

However, its interpretations often fragment human emotion into mechanical imaginings, mirroring the fractured identities many immigrants experience when adapting to new cultures.
I experimented with the process of learning this new birds’ language: when singing these “new bird languages” through Finnish phonetics, I found the process mirrored the immigrant’s journey of language acquisition: slow, repetitive, and mechanical.

Homi Bhabha’s “third space” in the framework of cultural linguistics explores how crossing cultural borders creates hybridity and new areas of meaning and negotiation ¹² . This “third space” is where conventional notions of language and identity are flexible and constantly changing, and the AI-generated bird song serves as a metaphor for cultural and linguistic hybridity. The bird language depicts the in-between space that many migrants face as they negotiate their identities in a new cultural setting, symbolizing not only the conflict between humans and machines but also between cultures.

By merging human emotions, AI mimicry, and folk traditions, I aim to reimagine how language—whether human, machine, or bird—becomes a site of cultural transformation, offering a poetic reflection of the negotiation between different cultural and linguistic worlds. The bird song transcends its original form, becoming a symbol of the complex, hybrid identities forged in migration and the posthuman era.

Soundscape, Composing, and the Vocal Performing

After completing the AI’s interpretation of Hong Yan, I began composing the melody and creating the soundscape.

In my vocal experiment, I minimized traditional musical accompaniment, opting instead for meaningful field recordings. These included soundscapes such as disjointed announcements in the Helsinki Immigration Office that struggling to pronounce diverse immigrant names and the repetitive, bird-like sounds of a new light tram passing my campus every day. Adding fragmented piano notes, these elements formed a new sonic landscape that provided both the cultural context and vocal backdrop for the bird song.

R. Murray Schafer’s theory of soundscape and acoustic ecology emphasizes the cultural and emotional significance of environmental sounds. In his book The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Schafer identifies how soundscapes form a “keynote” of a specific place, reflecting cultural memory and identity ¹³ . In the context of migration, soundscapes such as the disjointed announcements at the Helsinki Immigration Office or the tram’s bird-like sounds exemplify this cultural interplay, resonating with the fragmented identities of immigrants navigating new environments.

In the vocal expression, I captured the process of learning this new “bird language.” Initially, my pronunciation was slow and off-key, reflecting the challenges of acquiring a new language. The composition itself utilized two different melodic structures. In the first section, I took a gentle approach, without significant melodic fluctuations, allowing the bird song to unfold as a slow, storytelling journey.

In the second section, I used high-pitched vocals to mimic bird calls, creating an imagined dialogue with the birds. This section then blended into the original Hong Yan melody, woven into a vocal arrangement spanning nearly four octaves. The structure reflected cyclical repetition, mirrored by the visual of me wearing map-shaped wings, repeatedly attempting to cross national borders, but always being blocked by harsh reality. Meanwhile, the birds fly freely across these borders. This contrast reveals the tension between the migrant’s fantasy of freedom and the harsh realities of their existence, with birds symbolizing a freedom that humans can never fully experience.

4

Spread the Wings and Follow the Wind

Completing this experiment of becoming a bird felt like giving myself a long hug. Over the past two years, I’ve come to see myself as a migratory bird, forever in motion, longing for a home I may never truly find. This narrative is mine, but it resonates far beyond me; it belongs to countless individuals and communities, echoing as a poignant ecological fable.

When I embody the bird, I feel both its freedom and its fragility. In every wingbeat lies a reminder of displacement—of people fleeing their homes that won’t let them stay, of species losing theirs to ecological crisis. My work reflects this duality, inspired by scholars like T.J. Demos, who argue that art can help us imagine new futures by breaking away from human-centered thinking ¹⁴ . Through Free as Birds, I am not just telling my story but creating space to reflect on how migrations—human and non-human—are intertwined with ecological survival.

Looking ahead, I feel passionate about continuing this project as a long-term practice. One vision is to create a Bird’s Song Book, a collection of folk songs about birds and migration from diverse cultures. Each song reflects a unique cultural imagination of freedom, and I hope to gather them like scattered feathers, weaving them into a shared narrative about what it means to be free.

To continue this journey, I plan to form bird-song choirs through artist residencies, working with local communities to explore the entwined destinies of migration and ecology. The collective human voice—a choir—has the power to echo both personal longing and communal resilience, bridging individual stories and shared futures.

By being a bird and conveying through a created new language, this project is intensely personal yet reaches beyond me as a collective imagination of others and non-humans. Following the wind, which I see as an invisible and immense power that carries our traces, our longings, and our dreams.

I would like to trace a path not just through the imagination of a home but through the precarious, interconnected future we all share. With each spreading of the wings, I hope to reimagine what it means to find a home in a world that is at once cruel and impossibly beautiful.

Footnotes

1. John Berger. Why Look at Animals? In About Looking, 1–26. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. ↩
2. Jacques Lacan. Écrits: A Selection. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1977. ↩
3. William Wharton. Birdy. New York: Bantam Books, 1978. Film adaptation: Directed by Alan Parker, 1984. ↩
4. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1979). ↩
5. Rob Kitchin, Chris Perkins, and Martin Dodge. “Thinking about Maps.” In Rethinking Maps, 19. London: Routledge, 2009. ↩
6. Amelia Jones. “The ‘Eternal Return’: Self‐Portrait Photography as a Technology of Embodiment.” Signs 27, no. 4 (2002): 947–978. https://doi.org/10.1086/339641 . ↩
7. ‘Song for Ghost Travelers (2015)’, Robin Meier (blog), 15 October 2015, https://robinmeier.net/?p=2184 . ↩
8. ‘Birdsong Initiative / Rome – Otto Karvonen’, accessed 15 December 2024, https://ottokarvonen.com/2020/11/11/birdsong-initiative-rome/ . ↩
9. ‘The Link between Birdsong and Language | BBC Earth’, accessed 15 December 2024, https://www.bbcearth.com/news/the-link-between-birdsong-and-language . ↩
10. ‘Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst: The Call’, Serpentine Galleries, accessed 16 December 2024, https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/holly-herndon-mat-dryhurst-the-call/ . ↩
11. D. Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto : Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (na, n.d.), https://books.google.fi/books?id=M41CcgAACAAJ . ↩
12. Bhandari, ‘Homi K. Bhabha’s Third Space Theory and Cultural Identity Today: A Critical Review’. ↩
13. R.M. Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Inner Traditions/Bear, 1993), https://books.google.fi/books?id=-FsoDwAAQBAJ . ↩
14. T.J. Demos, Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (MIT Press, 2016), https://books.google.fi/books?id=OE6REAAAQBAJ . ↩