A Guide to the Brit­ish Non-Pas­ser­ines, 2002

Digit­al video, SD 720 × 576 4:3

32:56 min, loop

Per­formed by Mar­cus Coates

Cam­era and sound by Mar­cus Coates

Pro­duced by Wys­ing Arts

Bird spe­cies are taxo­nom­ic­ally divided into two groups, pas­ser­ines (perch­ing birds) and non-pas­ser­ines (non-perch­ing birds). Coates digit­ally slowed down record­ings of calls from 86 non-pas­ser­ine spe­cies nat­ive to Bri­tain. He filmed him­self mim­ick­ing these slowed calls. The res­ult­ing video foot­age was then sped up to the ori­gin­al tempo of each bird pro­du­cing an accur­ate human vocal record of these bird calls.