women !

Sing London has commissioned several writers and actors to work on a project involving 35 public statues across London and Manchester. These people have lent their voices to breathe life into the statues.

The project is a brain child of American-born Colette Hiller, who came up with the idea. She realised that statues tended to be part of a city’s unnoticed furniture. People encountered them everyday yet choose to mostly ignore them. This gave rise to a project titled “Talking Statues by an Art Organization called Sing London.

The process is simple but is supported by complex technology. Anyone with a Smartphone can hold the phone over a bar code or swipe it across a chip that sets off a call to the phone. The person swiping the phone receives a call where an audio file delivers the monologue. The statue seems to start talking in your phone. Like for example Queen Victoria is one of 29 statues in London and Manchester that has recently been given voices in “Talking Statues” project.Once you swipe your phone you start hearing, ““Hello, Victoria here. Queen of England for 63 years, seven months and two days — but who’s counting?” Actress Prunella Scaleshas given her voice and she further recounts the Queens achievements .A single mother, presiding over “the industrial revolution, economic progress and the invention of the telephone” it also has humour woven where she denies ever having said, “We are not amused.”

Talking Statues really takes talking to many lives after the person has gone and statues have found new lease of life and are more involved in their surroundings.

credits:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/arts/design/in-talking-statues-sing-london-gives-artwork-a-voice.html?_r=0

http://www.talkingstatues.co.uk/index.html#press