‘Paloma’ takes flight with sound and light
Discovery Green exhibit pays homage to migrating birds
Walk slowly through the oak alley at Discovery Green during the holidays and you might hear the high-pitched rattle of sandhill cranes overhead. Or the bizarre, driplike call of bitterns. The birds you will actually see in the tree canopy look more abstract, like origami pigeons or seagulls who have lights flashing under their wings.
The Discovery Green Conservancy often activates the park’s most beautiful corner with some sort of light spectacle, but this season’s installation, “Paloma,” is both meditative and thoughtprovoking. It’s a collaboration between the French collective Pitaya, known for its spectacular lighting designs, and Houston’s Lina Dibb, a multidisciplinary artist whose most recent project uses the calls of migratory birds as a springboard.
Dibb and Pitaya co-founder Arnaud Giroud, who were there for a preview last Thursday, said the project expanded trajectories for them both. “Together, we are creating a cross-continental conversation about movement and about our relationship to other people, other species and our environment,” Dibb said.
Pitaya, based in Lyon, France, specializes in the kind of immersive spectacles that stop traffic in urban settings, but their works don’t normally incorporate sound or flashing light. The Discovery Green installation, their first in Texas, contains 200 powdered-coated aluminum
birds. They’ve employed the forms before, but not on such a large scale. The birds are placed at various heights among the oak branches, so they appear to be a flock in motion.
Dibb’s audio work “Here and Now” provides a magical soundtrack, incorporating the sounds of globally migrating birds, the voices of human immigrants and music she creates by digitally mixing bird calls. (Dibb also has a related, less-optimistic sound piece up through Saturday at the Silos at Sawyer Yards as part of Sculpture Month Houston. That one considers the loss of bird species. The Discovery Green piece, however, is about resilience.)
Dibb is fascinated by all birds but amazed by the survival of long-distance migrators, such as the bar-tailed godwit, which flies 6,500 miles nonstop. And her eyes really light up when she talks about the arctic tern, the most epic of travelers. The arctic tern flies from pole to pole and can live up to 30 years, she says, “so in its lifetime, it basically flies to the moon and back three times.”
You might want to take a few round trips up and down the path to hear it.
The bird forms of “Paloma” are lightly colored, and the sound operates all day, but the experience seems truly enchanted at night. The installation is on view through Feb. 24 at Discovery Green, 1500 McKinney. Admission is free.