How Thousands of Pigeons Became Art (360 Video)

I can watch pigeons for hours and hours but I think that people are so accustomed to seeing them on the periphery as they kind of wander through their busy daily life that they don't really spend that much time looking at them it's difficult for me to say where this project began my involvement with pigeons goes back over two decades I began reading a lot about the military history of pigeons right here beyond us there was a massive island that no longer exists that was a man-made island called cob dock and that was where the largest naval pigeon coop was and where they would train pigeons that would go out on pretty much every naval vessel previous to the you know the development of modern radios and whatnot that that would be their really the only way that they communicate back to shore definitely very important to me to do the project on a boat and then when you know we were given access to the bay Lander I mean it couldn't been a more perfect fit that was basically a vessel design for for aircraft landing and taking off and we were again using it for a different type of aircraft landing and taking off at least different types of aviators yeah the the building of the coupe's happened extremely quick quickly only because it needed to that's it there's still a very specific set of building rules that are you know obviously completely different than any other type of architecture because they're very specific to making these birds as happy as possible and these are things that have been you know honed in on and developed through trial and error over thousands and thousands of years their training processes you know I mean pigeons are very very very smart and they you know they learn very quickly and you know they definitely recognize who the person is that is you know feeding them and caring for them and so they and they you know respond very quickly to a variety of signals visual and auditory signals and whatnot typically a lot of people in New York that have pigeons will usually focus in on one or two breeds but on this project we have several different varieties so there's rollers there's tipplers as high fliers this homer's variety of different fancy birds of course there's new york flights which is sort of the main you know breathe a Pidgeon to those demos Eames and some Egyptian Swift's if the list goes on and on we have a lot of different types of birds on here so when people arrive here there will be just enough light left in the sky that they'll be able to clearly sort of see the boat and I'll refer to clearly look at all the different colors types of bird I think just opening a world to other people that they might not normally get to see is is really kind of enough you know with a lot of art you know you're really just providing this space sometimes for contemplation and to you know for a person to just kind of slow down and not be distracted by other things and have a moment to focus in on something and ideally I think that each individual has their own unique individual experience you

Channel: Wall Street Journal

Views: 346,256

Rating: 4.3751912 out of 5

Keywords: pigeons, art, Duke Riley, Fly by Night, Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York City, lights, Creative Time

Id: v9wWuKbnvyc

Length: 6min 52sec (412 seconds)

Published: Sat May 07 2016