Cyberbirds: Audio | Video Peacock are mobile multimedia screens by Benoît Maubrey — The Audio Peacock is a wearable electronic instrument constructed out of polycarbonate (plexi-glass) equipped with loudspeakers, amplifier, battery and different sound-making devices (microphone, sampler, radio receiver, interactive sensors). As Video Peacocks, the costume functions also as a mobile screen onto which theme-specific visualizations (movies, pictures, internet blogs, interactive computer images, webcasts and closed circuit camera views) are projected.

This wearable electroacoustic instrument is shaped into a peacock’s fan-like plumage and is highly directional — projecting the sound into a space like an oversized radar dish. Much in the same way that the courtyard peacock “strutts his stuff” in front of a pea-hen and imposes with his awesome cry, so does the Audio Peacock stalk his architectural domain — using sound as a scalpel that cuts through air and sculpts it, transforming it to into his new realm. An Audio Peacock can either amplify and alter its own voice or electronic instruments using a microphone, sampler, and filters (loop + pitch), play pre-recorded sounds, or receive live sounds via transmitter/receiver.

As Video Peacocks (wearing white plexiglass „skins“) 4 of these electroacoustic birds patrol a darkened environment. Their audio costumes double as mobile projection screens: whenever their paths intersect the light of a video projector the costumes metamorphasize into multi-colored screens. Colorful visualizations (movies, pictures, internet blogs, interactive webcasts, closed-circuit cameras) are “beamed“ onto them as they play their sounds. As a site-specific and multi-phonic installation the parcours of these “cyber-birds“ is choreographed vis-a-vis to the emplacement of the projectors in the architectural space.

Benoît Maubrey was born of French parents in Washington DC in 1952. He graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts Diploma from Georgetown University. In 1979 he moved to West Berlin and after the collapse of the former East Germany moved to the state of Brandenburg where he and his partner Susken Rosenthal founded the non-profits arts organization Kunstpflug e.V. His performance and installation work has been presented in many international art festivals, Since 1990 he lives and works in the village of Baitz (near Belzig,Brandenburg/). Since 1983 numerous performances and exhibitions (a selection): Ars Electronica (1985), SONAMBIENTE/ Academy of Arts Berlin(1996), Tokyo City Opera/ NTT-ICC (1997), International Symposium of Electronic Arts/Chicago (1997), The Kitchen /NYC, Monaco Dance Danses Forum (2000), Seoul Performing Arts Festival, Location One/NYC, Gracia Territoria Sonor/Barcelona, (2003) , Thailand New Media Art Festival/Bangkok, Sitelines Festival/NYC (2006), Schloss Moyland/ Joseph Beuys Archive. (2007), Mostra des Artes/ Sao Paulo (2008).