Recently I was part of Prayer House which was a drop in room for prayer at Spring Harvest in Minehead. We had step various stations for people to aid people in their prayer. I set up two installations. One was the whispering tree. I hung 10 stereo speakers (so 20 in total) up and a bible verse played through three different voices through each speaker. The volumes were kept low to keep a sense of the tree that whispers.
Trees in some ways bookend the bible with the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the beginning and the Tree of life at both ends. The whispering was about conveying that the bible is in some sense alive and sounding; bubbling beneath the surface. This was the poster next to the work.
Here are a couple of images
and a hasty video
I also put up Tongues. It was a slightly reconstituted piece from Imagined Polyphonies. Rather than start with Malayalam I started with the English. This was the poster that went with it.
And an image.
I’m not sure what people thought of it. In one sense for many it would have been a new experience in listening and possibly would have taken a while to articulate what they felt. My shyness meant I didn’t ask either. But quite a few people seemed to spend time on the works.
The other stations/installations were very engaging as well and I felt that everything sat together well. Great work from the whole team at engageworship!