The Whisper Heard

This installation centres on the spoken word in relation to different notions of meaning and communication. Sounds and images are configured into three acoustic zones in the gallery, focused and reflected by loudspeakers and a parabolic dish. The artist has been working closely with two people who deal with language in very different ways. Tony O’Donnell has aphasia, a condition following a stroke that affects the language faculty of the brain. Severin Domela, aged three, is in the process of learning to speak. The participants respond to a narration of chapter twenty-eight of Jules Verne’s novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth.