People’s voices often blend into the sound of the surrounding environment.
When examining someone’s voice, I tend to consider the sound of the surrounding environment that comes with it, and the space in which the voice is heard, along with its tone and emotional impact. Rather than focusing on the linguistic function of words, perhaps it is more important to pay attention to other aspects such as tone, manner of speaking, breathing, intermittent moments of silence, regional and individualized dialects.
During my artist in residence program in Namwon, I recorded stories told by an elderly local resident living alone, who was unable to leave her house due to reduced mobility. As she recounts her life stories, her voice can be heard from the speaker installed in the center of the railway turntable, which conveys some profound feelings of loneliness through sighs, tremor and a unique tone. The railway turntable now looks like an abandoned relic hidden in bushes, and the sense of loneliness and desolation resonating from it resembles the for lorn voice from the speaker. In addition, if we regard life as a path that we must follow, the structure of the railway turntable that turns vehicles to the direction from which they came from is reminiscent of the situation where we’re forced to confront death more closely.