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A Confounding Mimicry
A Confounding Mimicry
4-channel sound for the Lincoln Park Conservatory's Fern Room, with 14 accompanying signs in English & Spanish
2016

This image shows the title plate from the fictional book invented by the artists and excerpted for the exhibition. The title plate was inspired by a real book in the artists's collection from 1889, which sensationalizes the natural world as a place of endless and fantastical conflict and wonder. The artists themselves traveled to Costa Rica in 2016 to make the recordings for this project, and concordantly they suggest their fictional book was written by a pair of married scientists who traveled from Chicago to Costa Rica in 1889, around the time of the Lincoln Park Conservatory's construction, to find the true source of the mysterious calls. The ultimate of these fictional scientists bring to bring back live singing ferns, as specimens to share with the Chicago public, thus exposing the 'confounding mimicry' of the Avisonorous Ferns of Monteverde.