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Chris Milk has made music videos for Kanye West and Arcade Fire, and if you go to the Barbican's new Digital Revolution exhibition, he will turn you into a bird.The Treachery of Sanctuary is located towards the back of a long, curving and somewhat disorientating gallery. Milk's taken over a narrow room, high ceilinged and dark, and at the far end he's created a bright white wall and a reflecting pool, so still that the water looks like glass. The water is not glass, though. and that wall is actually a screen of sorts, a digital canvas where flocks of tiny birds thread back and forth at the top.
Approach the screen, and your shadow's projected onto it, black and fidgety, anticipating magic. Reach up and watch as your fingers, your hands, your arms start to fragment, turning into birds that scatter into the sky. Walk to the left - this is an exhibition after all; there are probably people shuffling behind you - and your shadow's waiting once more. Now when you move, the birds swarm down in a single hungry mass, efficiently pulling you to pieces. Then you're back again, but transformed. Spread your arms and you grow wings. Shwoom! Silhouette wings with depth, with articulation, with individual feathers fanning out sharply from your wrists to your armpits.
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