RelicHummingbird
A passion project: years of studying hummingbirds until they were feeding from my hand, then a visualizer that turns their calls into a bird you can orbit, to watch the way they talk to each other.
- The birds
This started outside, not on a screen. A few years of studying hummingbirds: learning their routines, where they feed, how close they'll come. It ended with them feeding from my hand and landing on it in the wild. No cage, no trick, just time.
- The sound
What hooked me was the sound. Chirps, buzzes, wing hum, the little exchanges between two birds at a feeder. It reads as noise until you listen long enough, and then it reads as conversation.
- The visualizer
So I built a way to watch it. A recording is sliced into sound moments and each one becomes a node, beak to tail in time order. Louder moments are bigger, higher pitch glows brighter, and the whole thing hangs in 3D so you can orbit it while it plays. Two birds, two shapes, one conversation.
Try it
A 31-second clip, mapped. Press play, then drag to orbit, pinch or scroll to zoom, double-tap to reset. Sound on.
In the wild
Interactive art collection, XRPL