Parrot

Assembly Instructions for a Lego Parrot
A Lego Parrot is a work of art conceived by the Icelandic artist Kristleifur Björnsson, packed and presented to you to build brick by brick. Just follow the instructions and you will realize that this parrot is like no other bird you have ever seen. It might not be exotic in the traditional sense, but it is truly extraordinary.
Imagining a parrot made out of Lego is not hard, but a Lego Parrot is something different. A Lego Parrot does not try to look like parrots in nature, it is not a three-dimensional replica of a parrot. A Lego Parrot is a proper parrot, only much simpler and more complex than other parrots.
The structural logic is that essentially a Lego Parrot can be made from six pieces of classic Lego: two red bricks for the head and shoulders, one yellow one for the chest and feet and three blue ones for the tail (the Lego Parrot that Björnsson exhibits is closer to 'real size', i.e. 1189 bricks). It is a back-to-basics logic, back to the time before Lego jumped on the bandwagon of the hi-tech revolution of the late 20th century and started to create battery driven and computer controlled products consisting of thousands of different and custom-made pieces. A Lego Parrot expresses another evolutionary strand of the species, where progress is made through an exploration of Lego itself, as a unique construction material and constructivist idea. Contrary to the sophisticated and advanced products of most current Lego, a Lego Parrot incarnates the principle of Lego - everything can be created from a few pieces provided you use your imagination - in its pure and 'natural' form.
Whereas a Lego Parrot is structurally simple and easy to build, it is conceptually and biologically complex. In order to understand the nature of a Lego Parrot reason and established knowledge may not be enough. No entry in an encyclopedia will help us and an ornithologist would probably laugh us right in the face. That does not mean however that a Lego Parrot is not real, it just means it exists in an alternative reality, the reality of our imagination. In this reality phenomena are not defined by empirical thinking, but made possible by our ability to use abstraction and speculation. An ability that borders on the irrational and expands the horizon of the world we live in beyond the playgrounds marked out for us by technology and consumer culture.
So, do not feed a Lego Parrot. Let it feed your mind instead and set you free from the cage of perception.

Jacob Lillemose