Zwitscher Machines

Zwitscher Machines are complex combinations. They merge the natural with the artificial - the biological and the technological, the organic and the mechanical - to create symbols that are as fascinating as they are illuminating: in addition to the actual chirping, sounds, conversations and thoughts... 

Zwitscher Machines can be found in art as well as science, they are hidden in houses or stored in public places, you can carry them in your bag, but you can also install them at home. Wherever they are found, they serve their real purpose: to entice and capture. Zwitscher Machines are beautiful, cunning and ingenious.    

Yet it would be an error to assume that these machines have only existed since the Twitter portal took the internet by storm. Even if the mascot of the portal is a bird, a reminder that the site is a place to tweet, the actual invention was made much earlier and in a different context. It was Paul Klee in 1922 who invented the Zwitscher-Maschine in Weimar.   

And what does his watercolour of the same name show? Four birds sitting not on a hanging power line, but on a rotating shaft. Thus, the biological and the technological merge: the shaft can be set in motion by a hand crank, causing the birds to move up and down, presumably to produce different sounds, to sing a melody or even a song.    

In preparation for the Bauhaus year 2019, this year's summaery revisits Klee's invention in order to search for Zwitscher Machines throughout all of the faculties. What do they look like, where are they, and where are they going? What do they bring together, what leads them to encounter each other? And when they meet what signs or signals come about?   

They are projects that combine and confront the natural and the artificial, the organic and the mechanical, the biological and the technological in order to entice, amaze and captivate us.

(Prof. Dr. Henning Schmidgen)