Mick Hartley

Now playing at The Curve, in the Barbican: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot and his musical finches! A hundred years ago it might have been a music hall act. Now it's art.

Here they are on YouTube. I think it's fair to call that the edited highlights. When I was there this morning the little finches were indeed flying around and landing on the upturned guitars – normally clutching bits of twig, in a sad and futile nest-building ritual (I imagine the straggly guitar-top nests are brutally pulled apart by the curators every evening) - but it was all a bit desultory. The odd ping or boing, but nothing Derek Bailey fans would get excited about.

I was trying to work out why the whole experience was a bit depressing. They're lovely little birds, the zebra finches. You can get close to them and they don't fly off. Most people seemed rather charmed by them. Then there was the odd bloke (it's always a bloke) standing in serious contemplation, no doubt meditating on the John-Cage-like premise of the set-up, with the random generation of sound and all that. But really, nice little birds, and odd bursts of sound: it's not the worst art experience I've had, but…so what?

Here's an earlier YouTube of a Boursier-Mougenot piece. You can tell it's art by the way the hand-held camera wobbles around. "Conceptual artist Celeste Bouriser-Mougenot has programmed Paula Cooper's gallery computers to perform live music when the keyboards are typed on. Each key is given its own unique note on a scale…."  It's as tedious as it sounds. But now he's hit on the idea of bringing in some cute little birds, and in the marketplace of stale ideas that constitutes the modern art world, that's enough to make it stand out: "truly captivating" – The Guardian; "as uplifting as it is entertaining" – Time Out.

Well, I wouldn't want you to think my visit to the Barbican was a complete disappointment. Here are a couple of pictures: