Transcript
2023

Kings Canyon and Transcript, 2023, installation view: Coda, Einspach Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, 2023

Transcript, 2023, drawing, alarm calls of hundred birds, charcoal remains of burnt giant sequoia trees on paper, triptych, 185 x 450 cm, installation view: Coda, Einspach Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, 2023

The triptych represents in wave form the alarm calls of a hundred species of birds living in the forests of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The drawing was rendered by pieces of charcoal collected on the spot from the remains of the burnt giant sequoia trees which had reached an age of even 2-3000 years. Eighty-five per cent of the dense, old forests of the Sierra Nevada were destroyed or thinned drastically between 2011 and 2020. Fourteen thousand sequoia trees including many several thousand years old have recently burnt. There are no available data about the other, several billion plants and animals which have perished.

Transcript, 2023, charcoal remains of burnt giant sequoia trees on paper, triptych, 185 x 450 cm, detail

Transcript, 2023, drawing, alarm calls of hundred birds, charcoal remains of burnt giant sequoia trees on paper, triptych, 185 x 450 cm, detail

“Tamas Dezsö’s work focuses on the Sierra Nevada, a site of the California forest fires. The artist has transcribed the alarm calls of a hundred birds in the Sierra Nevada on his triptych, using remaining pieces of charcoal he had collected from the redwoods. The trees had lived for up to several thousand years but they burnt, so we may say more precisely that he transcribed them with the calcified corpse, the dead body of the sequoia trees, although the use of such words may seem unusual and sensational since they are not applied to other living beings apart from humans. Dezsö has committed to paper the sounds the birds can probably no longer make in many cases, because before they could do that the fire reached them at an incredible speed. The artist records by hand the wave forms made by bird voices using software, thus creating a personal, sensory relationship with the individual voices of birds.” Text by György Cséka, curator

Landscape, 2023 by Áron Birtalan, György Cséka and Tamas Dezsö, two-channel sound, electroacoustic composition for birdsongs, bird alarm calls and modular synthesizer, 10’05”. The composition is based on the songs and alarm calls of birds living in the forests of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.