Jung Hsu

A recording assemblage combining canary songs with spoken recitations of texts written about canary birds and caged birds.

Canary birds develop their songs through listening, imitation, and learning from other canaries, and sometimes from environmental sounds. Their singing serves multiple functions: mating, communication, competition, self-identification, and self-entertainment. Since canaries became popular domestic pets, breeding practices often separate young birds from their groups at an early stage and sell them once they are able to sing. Some canaries spend their early lives alone in human households, before reaching sexual maturity, without sufficient exposure to other birds. Young canaries typically begin to sing around six months of age, while sexual maturity occurs at approximately nine to ten months. In these conditions, the human owner becomes the bird’s sole audience, yet humans cannot respond in the bird’s own vocal language.

The canary and the caged bird have long inspired poets, artists, and writers. Many texts are marked by melancholy and sentimentality, while others use the bird as a symbol of freedom, contrasting the confined body in the cage with the imagined flight across open skies that humans themselves cannot achieve.

In this work, the canary’s song may never reach other birds, but its voice has been heard by humans and transformed into writing. These human-authored texts, born from listening, will be heard by us today.