Voice Park

This project became Act IV of the Land of Green Ginger – which one of the largest projects of the UK City of Culture for which I was a producer.

“We are on a mission to explode the very act of speaking to find ways to hold, touch and sense the voice… to walk amongst and play with it… and to find new ways of speaking collectively.”

Aswarm

Phase 1

Aswarm’s mobile voice collection teams, or “Vearo’s”, went out across the city, engaging people in the spaces where they live, shop, work and play in a vocal vapour capturing exchange. Providing a series of encounters where people get to hold and see their voice in a whole new light and enlisting them as co-conspiritors in the Voice Park project.

Phase 2

All the disparate vocal components that make up a cities voice are gathered together into the Voice Park. An immersive installation and interactive mechanism that enables people to play with and articulate the collective voice of their city. Exploring the very nature of ‘speaking’ and the creative potential of the collective voice. Open by day and by night, a whole pride of Voice-pods pulse with light & sound, collectively condensing all the vocal vapour we have gathered into a little bottle of Essence-du-Voix, for people to take away and use when they need to draw on the power of their cities voice.

“I’m going to treasure my little bottle of ‘essence of distilled voices’ forever!”

A visitor to the Voice Park

“[The producers of UK City of Culture] provided the perfect scenario to create and prototype. We now want to build on this initial site-specific concept to explore the notion of ‘Our Voice’ that spans from the individual to the group, the city, the nation and build towards a European touring project. We are actively looking for partners…”

Aswarm

Since it was commissioned for the UK City Of Culture, Project VEAR has evolved, with support from 101 Outdoor Arts, Oxford Contemporary Music and Oxford City Council, it is now a tourable installation and engagement project. It has since appeared at Wolverhampton Art Gallery & WolvsLitFest.