العربية
Design a kinetic sculpture representing the world’s most linguistically diverse city,
British artist and stage designer, S. Devlin,
has created a luminous kinetic sculpture representing “the most linguistically diverse city on the planet” in New York.
Dubbed “Your Voices,” the sculpture is located in Josie Robertson Square at Lincoln Center in New York City.
It was shown from December 6 to 18, 2022.
The kinetic sculpture, made up of 700 glowing ropes,
expresses the 700 languages currently spoken in New York City.
Design features
Allowing visitors to enter the statue and feel themselves inside a soundscape that can be heard from its surroundings,
it is an installation where visitors get lost in an arc vortex.
The ropes are stretched between a series of structural arches,
surrounding visitors with a rotating and illuminated grid as it rotates north, south, east and west.
Through a multilingual soundscape that integrates languages drawn from across the city,
from Algerian Arabic, Alsatian, Azeri and Ashanti to Zapotec, Zarma and Zulu.
The work responds
to the observation of anthropologist Wade Davis:
“Every language is an ancient growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought,
a whole ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.”
As the statue rotates, it acts as a lens between the viewer and its surroundings,
as the viewer’s perspective is divided and framed by the shifting threads of the sculpture as it turns.
What evokes the way our perspectives are enriched and shaped by experiencing the linguistic structures and identities of others.
Amidst a soundscape composed by contemporary composers, Polyphonia,
in which the powerful text from E.M. Forster’s 1910 novel Howards End has been translated into several superimposed languages.
Every language is a vast library of cultural, historical and biological knowledge,
collected over centuries and New York City is a living language library.
While the luminous harmonics of this work aim to draw attention to the complex beauty of New York’s linguistic diversity
and celebrate its vital role in the resilience and civic sustainability of the city and its future.
The sculpture was commissioned by Moet and Chandon,
in collaboration with the Endangered Language Coalition.
Thanks to this installation, visitors are encouraged to learn more
about their work in the protection and development of linguistic diversity.
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