Baby Birds 2009

Directed by C. Spencer Yeh

Baby Birds provides an intimate look at Yeh's body and the physiological production of sound. Five views of the artist's throat appear on screen, the camera looking down each one in illuminated close-up. The mouths open and close, exposing quivering tongues and uvula, and produce a layered soundtrack of scratchy, wheezing, squeaking laments. Visceral and visually captivating, Baby Birds addresses the dilemma that auditory experiences are more abstract than visual ones, and thus more difficult to "articulate" and to share.