Aereo

Since the origins of humanity, human beings have sought to give names to things. In the very Genesis, the notion of naming appears as a foundational gesture: “the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the sky, and the beasts of the field.” Nomenclature is not only a way of designating, but also of creating typologies, ordering the chaos of the world, classifying it and, in a certain sense, constraining it. To name is also a way of feeling that we possess what we name.

Aéreo is a generative work that explores the fragile universe of the birds that inhabit and pass through the region of Extremadura, from threatened species to those that merely rest, migrate, or temporarily share this territory. The chromatic palette of the work corresponds to the colors of the plumage of the birds present in Extremadura. Through a custom designed algorithm, the piece draws on a database of birds from the region. This information is transformed into an animation that simulates the collective behavior of flocks, projected onto an expanded surface of keys taken from recycled computer keyboards.

In Aéreo, language functions as visual material: in the animation, letters cluster together to form the names of birds and, at other moments, disperse until their meaning dissolves. The piece thus creates a tension between the impulse to use language to fix reality and the possibility of freeing it. Nature breaks in and dismantles the structure, causing meaning to become unstable.

The result is a poetic visual and technological framework that invites reflection on the human impulse to name the world, the instability of language, and the way nature subverts the structures we attempt to fix.