Recovered by: a.c.

Date stamp corrupted. Memory unstable.

It started with a folder labeled

“untitled_birds_finalmaybe_027”

I found it on an external drive, zipped inside a pouch next to a broken field recorder and a half-smoked carton of European cigarettes. The kind of debris that usually signals a love story, or an escape.

The folder had no metadata. Just thirteen files. Audio corrupted, handwritten notes scanned at low resolution. Some of the files loop. One of them ends in the middle of a sentence.

I didn’t recognize the voice. But it felt like it recognized me.

The artist left no clear authorship. No liner notes. No order.

Just the names of birds.

I’ve started assembling what I can—demos, field notes, marginalia, what emotional residue remains.

For ease of communication, I’ve been referring to the project as music for birds.

The transmission appears to have been directed toward non-human recipients—possibly symbolic, possibly literal.

I’ve begun categorizing the fragments. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find, but the work continues.

I’ll continue documenting what surfaces, as long as the signals persist.

—Arden Cunningham

Field Archivist, Bureau of Emotional Ecology

Signal Nest.3A – status: incomplete