Magpie Thoughts combined scientific imaging of birds in flight shot in the wind tunnel of the flight lab at the University of Montana by my collaborator biomechanist Dr. Brett Tobalske, as part of our Motion Studies series of projects, which included a gallery installation, as well as a public art project at SeaTac International Airport. 

In Magpie Thoughts the scientific imaging was combined with kinescopic (moving x-rays) studies of human motion made as part of efficiency studies in 1930s Germany. The skeletal figures, along with the ghostly birds and a soundtrack of digitally altered bird song suggests the peril all living beings find themselves in as we enter the end stages of the Anthropocene.