900 Voices launches at Edinburgh International Festival

900 Voices: An ambitious participative sound art project for the 900th Anniversary Celebrations of St Giles’ Cathedral Edinburgh launches as part of Edinburgh International Festival.

Article Source: 900 Voices
Last Updated: 24 July 2024 12:52

900 Voices is a participatory sound art project by Zoë Irvine with Lindsay Perth and Jules Rawlinson. 900 Voices is a sound installation exploring notions of belonging, connection and community, blending voices from hundreds of Edinburgh citizens.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS:

900 Voices is created entirely from recorded conversations with people who live across the city of Edinburgh. These conversations revolve around themes of belonging, connection and community with the sound installation revealing and blending moments from these recordings. The recording process continues throughout 2024, with each new citizen’s recording added to the installation’s database.

Edinburgh International Festival - 900 Voices in St Giles’ Cathedral is proud to be included in the Edinburgh International Festival, celebrating the city’s longstanding tradition of arts and culture and bringing the diverse voices of Edinburgh to festival audiences. [www.eif.co.uk/events/900-voices]

Every experience of 900 Voices is unique - 900 Voices uses a variety of computer procedures to select, combine and place sounds in real-time, as listeners freely walk around the Cathedral. The computer programme makes new choices for each cycle by searching the conversation database for words and themes, moving around the Cathedral’s 46 speakers.

900 Voices at the Edinburgh International Book Festival: 900 Voices will appear at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where Zoë, Lindsay, and Jules will discuss their experiences of gathering and composing the community’s conversations, exploring the incredibly diverse experiences and meaning that belonging, community and connection can hold.
[www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/900-voices-conversations-on-belonging]

900 Voices Creative Team - Edinburgh-based international Artists: Leading the project are sound artist Zoë Irvine (Creative Director of 900 Voices) who specialises in working with sound, voice and participative practice; Lindsay Perth who is a public realm artist and designer with an award-winning socially engaged art practice and Jules Rawlinson who is an audio-visual composer, improviser, designer and researcher.

ABOUT ST GILES’ CATHEDRAL
St Giles’ Cathedral, the High Kirk of Edinburgh has been a focal point of religious and community life for nine centuries. A backdrop to Scotland’s turbulent religious history, it has seen the seeds of civil war sown and acted as John Knox’s parish church during the Reformation. St Giles’ Cathedral is open to all, to worship, to visit and to experience music, art, and history within its walls. When St Giles’ became a cathedral 900 years ago, Edinburgh became a city.

900 Voices is funded by Creative Scotland & St Giles’ Cathedral and supported by Edinburgh Napier University.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Zoë Irvine [https://zoeirvine.net]
Zoë Irvine is a prolific and internationally acclaimed sound artist with a history of large scale participative projects with voice and conversation at their core including DIAL-A-DIVA a 24 hour, global telephonic singing event and This Evenings’ Performance, an international event linking European opera companies which had closed due to lockdown, to audiences by phone in live conversation.

Lindsay Perth [http://www.lippi.org]
Lindsay Perth is a Public Realm Artist and Designer. Perth has an award-winning creative practice that includes socially engaged commissions and residencies across Scotland.

Jules Rawlinson [https://www.pixelmechanics.com]
Jules is an audiovisual composer, improviser and designer working with electronic sound, digital visuals and interactive technologies in solo and collaborative settings within international networks of practice.

Website: https://www.900voices.org
Email: hello@900voices.org

Continuation of 900 Voices after August:
Sep – Nov: 900 is open to the public every Wednesday 4 – 6pm Sep – Nov 2024. The work continues to grow with community events, more recordings, and a finishing event in December.

Photo credit: Peter Dibdin

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