Project Description
What Bird are You? is a playful interactive project that identify people into different bird species based on their skeleton measurements. It explores the body by bringing together birds, people, imagination, and scientific observation. Human bodies and bird bodies follow very different evolutionary stories, but they also share certain structures and functions. Both have upper arms, forearms, thighs, and shins. Both rely on these bones to move, reach, support weight, and interact with the world. In this project, six bird groups are introduced: swimming, wading, raptor, terrestrial, scansorial, and singing birds. Every bird species has five significant bones: humerus, ulna, femur, tibiotarsus, and tarsometatarsus, the first two wing bones, and the remaining three leg bones. Similar to the human skeleton, they correspond to upper arm, forearm, thigh, shin, and foot. Your measured bones are translated into a set of ratios. These ratios are then compared to the average ratios of the six bird categories. The system does not rely on a fixed answer. Instead, it blends your bone data with a degree of randomness. There is no correct or incorrect outcome. The goal is not to determine what you truly are, but to imagine what your life might be if your skeleton followed another path.