An immersive art installation which focuses on the voices of Edinburgh has opened to the public at St Giles Cathedral to celebrate the building’s 900th anniversary.
The project ‘900 voices’ has interviewed more than 200 locals between the ages of three to 93 from a variety of backgrounds in the city.
Recordings of the conversations will play on speakers around the cathedral as visitors mill around, while a computer programme ensures they never play in the same order or sequence.
The installation is currently open to guests throughout the international festival. Then every Wednesday 4-6pm from September to November with a closing event planned for December.
STV NewsSound artist Zoë Irvine worked with public artist and designer Lindsay Perth and composer and sound designer Jules Rawlinson to create 900 Voices.
She told STV News: “The installation uses a bespoke computer programme that Jules has created that searches and sifts through all of the material and brings moments of conversations to the surface in relation to each other in different ways.
“I had this vision of what it would be like for people to experience the cathedral with all these different voices echoing around talking about belonging, connection and community.
“If lots of people are using the word ‘nature’ there might be a moment when nature becomes the theme – it might be a child and an older person, any person, brought together by common themes.
“We were sound checking the other morning, when we heard someone talking about the experience of being a single parent through one speaker, whilst through another speaker we heard a man talking about his sense of connection through being in a choir.
STV News“That combination will never happen again, it shuffles all the time.”
Sound designer Jules Rawlinson said: “It’s a privilege to be able to work in this space and to work with such a wide range of spaces
“There’s a great conversation from a Lothian bus driver with a wonderful sense of his own experience of the city.”
Designer Lindsay Perth added: “I think it’s actually a reminder of that little part you play within that history.
“Just a little bit of a reminder that we all have different life experiences but we all bring a commonality to who we are and how we treat others”.
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