One of Guardian’s VR’s most creative works, Songbird is a fairytale with a dark heart.
The piece transports you to the island of Kauai, Hawaii, in 1984 and into a painted replica of a lush cloud forest filled with colourful birds. Here, you are invited to search for the last known ʻōʻō, an iconic black bird with yellow leg feathers and a beautiful song, a bird whose existence has been threatened to the point of extinction.
The hand-painted artwork and animation was created by Uri and Michelle Kranot of the production studio TinDrum. Henrik Oppermann created the fully spatialised soundscape of recordings of extinct birds – sonic fossils – combined with authentic sounds from the Kauai’an wet forest. The British actor Siân Phillips narrates the piece.