First there’s the unexpected encounter with these little metal birds – funny looking woodpeckers that tap their beaks on a rain gutter, railing, traffic light or other urban architecture. The tapping sounds like ever-changing Morse code signals, a robotic noise with constant variations, or a new kind of random moving and beating concerto that infiltrates our sound environment. Once you’ve got past the fascination with the acoustic composition created by these little technological wonders, you start to realise that it is the waves generated by our phones and surrounding Wi-Fi that trigger these birds’ movements, materialised into real-time sound signals.

These Woodpeckers make our day-to-day electromagnetic spectrum audible, providing a visible representation of the waves created by mobile communication that now follows us everywhere. These beautiful robotic woodpeckers are musical instruments, technological hybrids, urban disturbers, and educational indicators that move us and speak to us through their aesthetic appeal, acoustic grace and unique beating harmonies. They also have a lot to say about our modern world, quietly, without any grand claims or statements, simply with the elegance and poetry of a beautiful sound installation.