By Gus Saltonstall
It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s a drone!
Drones will light up the sky over Central Park on Saturday night as part of an open-air, public-art performance that aims to mimic the flight behavior of starling birds.
The performance, dubbed “Franchise Freedom” and created by the Dutch studio DRIFT, will feature 1,000 drones that fly over Central Park with movements that mimic 10 years of starling flight behavior data.
There will be three 10-minute show times at 7 p.m., 8 p.m., and 9 p.m. Each are free and open to the public.
DRIFT says the best places to watch the light show within Central Park will be at the Bethesda Fountain, Bandshell, Dead Road, Boat Landing, and Lake Overpass. You can check out a map of the best viewing locations on the art studio’s website.
“Franchise Freedom is an aerial drone performance exploring the relationship between man, nature and technology,” reads DRIFT’s description of the drone show. “To create Franchise Freedom, DRIFT translated over 10 years of starling flight behavior research into an especially-developed software that is embedded in the drones.”
There is also an accompanying soundtrack you can listen to during the show available on DRIFT’s website.
It is the largest public-art project in Central Park since “The Gates,” according to the organizers.
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I’m hoping the weather cooperates!
Super creepy.
I’m sure this will ‘look’ spectacular, but have any precautions been taken to protect the actual live birds that might be harmed by these drones? Not to mention a faulty drone that could drop or fly into the crowds of people. I’m a big supporter of art installations (loved ‘The Gates’ in Central Park years ago, but this one seems potentially risky to wildlife and humans. Hoping for the best!
This could have a disastrous affect on migrating birds. Possibly killing many hundreds.
Should take place after migration.
Seeing the word “drones” scares me now.
Likely to get us used to swarming drones in public places in NYC.
From where, Jay? Canada attacking us?
Adams is cheerleading the NYPD’s plans to deploy drones.
Let’s scare the birds and squirrels to show off. The Gates, there was a nightmare that lasted for months.
why is the restricted area so big?
Hard to know if it’s irony or ignorance that the work celebrates the starling, an invasive species and one of those perfect examples of man manipulating nature to its detriment. Of all the options, why starlings?
I really hope they’ve taken migrating birds and other wildlife into account to ensure their safety. The birds have enough issues migrating through Manhattan alive with all the window strikes.
Drift does such an amazing job so just enjoy-lets hope that the weather will cooperate
According to Birdcast (birdcast.info), co-developed by Cornell University Ornithology, there were more than 500,000 birds that flew over Manhattan during the evening hours last Friday, October 13th. Fall migration is still occurring through mid-November. This drone event will result in the untimely and preventable deaths and injuries of hundreds or thousands of migrating and resident birds. Rather than a drone simulation of migrating birds, it would be more illuminating for Franchise Freedom and its partners, sponsors and followers to cancel this event and instead apply their resources (time, talent, technology and money) in pursuit of the preservation of birds rather than destroying them. The NY Times published an article this week about the detrimental impact of glass buildings to birds – https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/climate/new-york-birds-windows.html.
No thank you. Why interfere with actual birds who live in and are migrating through the park?Can we just enjoy nature – what little we have in this city – rather than disrupt it?
Sounds amazing! Thanks for letting us know, West Side Rag.
I can’t believe people are upset about this. We must be the complainiest neighborhood anywhere.
Yeah, who cares about other inhabitants of this city?
My dog gets totally freaked out by drones – I hope they cancel this event
I went. From the top of the entrance to Bethesda Fountain at least – which was labeled the “prime viewing area”, , I found it to be very meh….half the time, hidden by trees to the west.
That said, I can’t see how this would be much risk to birds. If it is, can anyone offer actual evidence, as opposed to fearful hypotheses?
Seems lame to so widely publicize an “public” event with such tiny viewing areas. I went and it was absolutely packed and completely obstructed.
Well that was a let down. I am wondering if something went wrong. It was cool for about 3 minutes but didnt seem to have much org to it. That was the 9pm show.
A few weeks ago we were in San Francisco and coincidentally saw a drone who over the bay that was pretty cool mimicking different characters.
I went to the Bethesda to see this. What a waste of time. It started slightly before 7PM and it was over in about 5 minutes. The drones went up and then they went down. They did not even remotely mimic a murmuration. Huge crowd, but I think maybe a handful of people had an unimpeded view of this failure.
it was nice but you couldn’t see most of it as the trees were blocking the lights. There were too many people to see it clearly.. The recommended music was only 4 mins. long ,but the display was supposed to be 10 mins. so the music ran out. Kind of a dud.
While I expected more I should say the artist and those working on it put in a lot of time and lent their creativity. Can you imagine a decade ago hearing about drones creating a light show. And hey there were thousands of people there.