16 Voices

I was in the Art Gallery of Ontario here in Toronto and I saw the most incredible exhibit. It was this open room with sixteen speakers all facing different directions, each with a looped track of a woman's voice playing. As I first stepped in, I could only hear a mess of voices, like stepping into a busy train station or something.

But as I stepped closer to one speaker, I could listen to the singular track, with the other fifteen as ambiance. Each speaker played a loop of a small, beautiful vignette about a simple happening, such as spilling coffee or going into a river to retrieve an object--all of it narrated by the same woman with a beautiful simple voice.

As I moved from speaker to speaker listening to each snippet, each lasting from 30 seconds to a couple minutes, I realized that there were really only three or four stories being told. But in each clump of speakers held the same story, each speaker holding a different perspective of the event. My favorite was two speakers facing each other, and when I stood between the two, I was eavesdropping between a conversation about spilled coffee.

I'm still not sure why I loved it so much. Maybe it was the dreamlike quality of the room, the intense amount of creative mindpower, or that little bit of schizophrenic hysteria.