Catherine Clover
Tell Me Something: A Field Guide to the Voices of an Unkindness of Ravens
Edition of 200
This book is based on the urban landscape rather than the rural landscape and it is concerned with wildlife that chooses to live in cities. 'Tell Me Something: A Field Guide to the Voices of an Unkindness of Ravens' is an artist's book printed as part of the exhibition 'birdbrain' (2011). It is a mock field guide to one year's worth of transcriptions of the voices and exchanges of the ravens that live in and around Coburg cemetery in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. The ravens are a common part of the urban landscape of Melbourne and their voices are readily heard across the city. A text-based work, it transcribes the language of the ravens but it does not translate. The birds’ language remains unintelligible to us. Yet reading the words out loud - in effect, mimicking the birds - gives the reader a perceptual understanding that is absent from reading in silence.
