As home to the art department, the Regis Center for Art is no stranger to spontaneous art installations, but the silver streamers lining its skyway do more than just beautify the space.
Created by University of Minnesota students Erin Jordahl and Jolie Schrage (pronounced “SHRAY-ghee”) for the fall semester 2024 Art and Ecology class, the streamers actually serve as a temporary bird strike mitigator, as detailed by posters on both ends of the skyway.
According to Ph.D. student Andrew Hallberg, creator of the Stop The Thud! initiative on campus, bird strikes happen because birds can’t perceive transparent or reflective surfaces, a key facet of the city landscape present in many campus buildings. They then fly into those surfaces, resulting in injury and often death.
Hallberg said external glass modifications are the best practices for bird strike mitigation.. Jordahl and Schrage said they knew that kind of effort was beyond the scope of their one-semester class, but that they hoped the streamers would be a step in the right direction.
“We just wanted to do something. We wanted to take some action that we thought might prove to be helpful,” Jordahl, a University Law School alum, environmental activist and artist, said.
Since the streamers went up on Feb. 28, Jordahl and Schrage were put in contact with Hallberg, who was excited for the streamers to test bird strike mitigation on the Regis skyway.
“I do think that there’s some promise to what they’ve done with the Regis skyway. By putting the streamers on the inside, I think that’s going to take away a lot of that transparency,” Hallberg said. “You also have a lot of movement, so it’s providing these reflections and fluttering in an air current, which could act as a visual deterrent.”
According to Hallberg, the Regis skyway is not the biggest problem area on campus — Stop The Thud! data only shows four reported strikes on the skyway — but bird strike mitigation is a crucial endeavor for a large urban campus like the University.
Hallberg added that it’s too soon to tell how effective the streamers are, since many bird strikes happen during spring migrations.
“These birds are migrating right through the heart of some of our biggest cities,” Hallberg said. “Figuring out ways to make it so that these birds can go from Central and South America all the way to Canada and make it through our cities safely is something we should all be working towards.”
The streamers not only serve their sustainable function, they also transform the skyway space. Their fluttering and shimmering adds a sort of magic to the ubiquitous Twin Cities structure.
It speaks to the layered definitions of sustainability that Assistant Professor Chotsani Elaine Dean, co-lead of the art department’s sustainability, space and building committee, seeks to engage with at Regis.
“What we’ve been working on long term is building a sustainability culture at the department, since you can’t use a word if there isn’t a culture behind it,” Dean said. “You can’t just get new buildings all the time.”
This has involved environmental initiatives such as bird strike mitigation and pollinator gardens as well as creating spaces that sustain students as artists with the inclusion of plants, comfortable furniture and spaces that are clearly marked for student use.
“People take bees for granted, and I think our culture takes artists for granted,” Dean said. “The different concerns of students and faculty all come together to create the culture of learning how to make art and the many different paths one can take.”
After all, it was direct action from art students that made the streamers happen and will set up Regis for a more sustainable future.