Dawn Chorus uses human voices to replicate the natural phenomena of a birdsong chorus at dawn during Spring. Composed of fourteen screens, each features a view of a human habitat such as a car, office, bedroom and school staff room. Individuals are seen sitting in their domains singing accurate birdsong.

Assisted by Coates, wildlife sound recordist Geoff Sample recorded the individual wild bird songs on the edge of a small woodland near Bamburgh, Northumberland, from 3 am to 9 am in May 2005. Up to fourteen microphones were used to simultaneously record the individual songs. The recordings of each bird were then slowed down by up to 20 times, lowering the tone and lengthening the duration so that they fell in the range of the human voice and became slow enough to sing.

Singers from a variety of choirs in Bristol volunteered to mimic these recordings. They were selected according to their vocal range and ability, the bird songs varying in complexity. The singers were then filmed singing along to the birdsong for up to two hours.

The video footage together with the audio was then sped up to the original tempo, creating a transformation of the human voice into that of a bird. When the individuals are seen and heard as a collective, the timings of their songs, replicate when they were sung on the morning they were originally recorded.