Fine Feathered Friends (2019-2021)

Cinderella is a robot built from a cinder block--and other tissues of a building's organs--that tries to commune with animals as fairytale princesses do, but only those that tuck their lives into the nooks and crannies of our own artificial habitats: rats, mice, gulls, geese, and pigeons.

From another view, Cinderella is the minimum chunk of a building required to support a surveillance camera: one cinder brick, one small utility box, wires running through the slice of wall the brick represents, and the surveillance camera itself.

In Fine Feathered Friends, Cinderella sets her eye on three synanthropic species, the pigeons that loiter at the Santa Monica Pier, the ducks at the pond in Kit Carson Park, and the geese that frequent Whittier Narrows Recreation Area.


Thanks to: Steve Mahler and David Familian

One of a series of projects about synanthropic animals, the built, the grown, and the body supported in part by a residency at the Beall Center for Art + Technology.