What gives you a sense of community, belonging?
What makes you feel connected?
Welcome to 900 Voices
900 Voices was a participative sound art project by Zoë Irvine with Lindsay Perth and Jules Rawlinson. It was commissioned as part of Edinburgh’s St Giles Cathedral’s momentous 900th Anniversary celebrations in 2024.
900 Voices was a sound art installation made specifically for St Giles’ but is also a podcast series, now that the installation has finished.
You can listen to the podcast here: audio documentation of the installation. Here you can view images of our events as well as the pdf of booklet that accompanied the installation.
Throughout 2024, 900 Voices invited people in Edinburgh to have conversations about belonging, connection, and community. These conversations were recorded and shared through the artwork.
What do these terms - belonging, community, connection - mean to people from various walks of life in our city? What is important? What resonates? What is our lived experience? People have generously shared their thoughts, feelings, and reflections in the artwork’s recorded conversations.
During it’s run in Edinburgh International Festival 2024, 900 VOICES in St Giles’ Cathedral had over 2200 people visit the sound work.
The 900 Voices accompanying booklet can be downloaded here.
Images from 900 Voices installation, events and community recordings can be found here.
And audio documentation of the installation can be listened to here.
900 Voices is a conversation made of recorded conversations.
The installation in St Giles’ uses a variety of computer procedures to select, combine and place fragments of conversation in real-time, making new choices for each cycle by searching the database for words and themes. Sometimes individual words will emerge and at other times longer reflective sections allow listeners to encounter and engage with individual contributions.
