A cathedral in Edinburgh will host an immersive art installation exploring community as part of the site’s historic 900th anniversary.
It will run at St Giles’ Cathedral from Friday August 2 until November. 900 voices is also part of this year’s Fringe festival and currently features around 220 hours worth of interviews with residents in the city aged from three to 93 speaking about belonging there.
The conversations have been added to a database which selects key-words from people’s conversations and then plays extracts through the cathedral’s multi-channel sound system.
The cathedral was founded in the 12th century and was initially catholic, before becoming protestant after the reformation John Knox becoming the minister there.
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Zoe Irvine is the sound artist who helped create 900 voices and explained that listeners will never have the same experience twice.
She said: “The way the installation works is using 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.
“That combination will never happen again, it shuffles all the time.”
Around 270 people have taken part in the conversations so far but they hope that hundreds more will be added up until the end of November.
The recordings took place in weekly session over several months at St Giles as well as in libraries and community centres, with volunteers trained on how to use equipment and guide the conversation.
Ms Irvine added: “We ask about belonging, and connection and community and people have really different ideas about what these things are.
“Quite early on just asking people about those terms was incredibly rich.
“There are things people have in common but many things which are individual.
"Between 20 minutes and 45 minutes turns out to have been the natural 900 Voices conversation length. Some conversations that last 10 minutes, there’s one conversation that lasted three hours.
“We have a basic structure but what we have tried to be is good listeners, to be curious and empathetic.
“People have talked about really difficult things too – about recovering from alcoholism, health challenges, about racism, about prejudice – because in order to talk about belonging people have sometimes had to talk about not belonging.”
The event will be open to the public every Wednesday from 4pm-6pm and there will also be a final event in December.
Ms Irvine revealed the entire project is built around the cathedral’s layout and acoustics as well as the technical equipment already on the site.
She added: “The space of the cathedral is completely integral and the installation has been designed technically and aesthetically for St Giles.
“Cathedral architecture is an incredible amplifier. To be able to do it thoroughly, to be able to do it well was amazing. We’ve got hundreds of hours of recordings.
"The installation aims to immerse listeners in these voices, rather than a linear listening, which with so many hours would be overwhelming.
"In this way too a depth of engagement with the themes is more possible.
“Hopefully we’ll get a real sense of something about Edinburgh – what our community is, what we are part of.”
Rev Dr George Whyte, who is the interim moderator of St Giles’, added: "For 900 years the voices of so many people have echoed round the walls of the Cathedral.
“It is entirely fitting that as we pass this milestone we hear each other talk about the things which matter to us and which we hold in common."
A service of thanksgiving and dedication for the international Festival will take place on Sunday 4 August at St Giles.
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