Decrypt the Pantheon
Collaboration with Oualalou+Choi contracted through Theatre Projects
Pantheon - Paris - July 2017
Credit: Courtesy of Oualalou + Choi
Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, Voltaire, and many more of France’s most legendary citizens spoke once more on Bastille Day (July 14 2017) through an interactive art exhibit at the Pantheon, France’s national mausoleum. The exhibit, titled “Decrypt the Pantheon,” uses a system of speakers hung from stationary balloons to project the voices of famous French men and woman talking about the value, tenuousness, and hard-fought nature of liberty.
As visitors moves below the balloons, the voices of legendary philosophers, scientists, and artists will wash over them from the state-of-the-art, directional HSS speaker systems. The speakers projected a narrow cone of sound, inaudible from everywhere but directly underneath the installation. The idea behind the single-audience monologue was to create an intimate and private conversation, speaking directly from the past to the nation’s future.
This installation is the result of a conversation with Tarik Oualalou. Tarik wanted to have these large balloons floating in the nave before i suggested “Why not install directional speakers below them and have ghosts of the great people resting at the Pantheon? Their ghosts would come and murmur to your ears.“
Credit: Courtesy of Oualalou + Choi