The Sound Mirrors Project will construct two Sound Mirrors on each side
of the English Channel - enabling the English and the French to speak
to each other across the sea.
The project has evolved from a pre-war acoustic technology that left a string of forgotten concrete mirrors along the south east coast of England. Known as "listening ears' they were constructed as an early warning system against an airborne invasion across the English Channel, and collected sound in giant concrete dishes operated by trained listeners to pick up distant noises from the sky. Today they stand listening out to Sea like strange metaphors for Cross Channel relations. In their very human atmosphere they seem to be yearning for contact, like radio telescopes listening out for extra terrestrial voices.
The Sound Mirrors Project is about rediscovering this piece of military history as a human, not heroic, endeavor and it is an attempt to reinvent this redundant technology for a new day. The project will build two new Sound Mirrors. One will be placed in Folkstone, filling a gap in the existing chain of mirrors along the English coast. The other will be placed on the coast of France, approximately 25 miles across the Channel. Visitors to the new mirrors will not only be able to listen to the sky - they will be able to talk across the sea to those standing on a listening platform in front of the other mirror, on the other side of the Channel.
The two new mirrors will turn a long forgotten defence technology into an instrument for communication between two countries. They will turn the historically psychologically charged geographic space between England and France into a cross Channel performance space – a sort of Hyde Park Corner across the sea.
The project has so far involved engineers, architects, technologists, specialists, local communities, town planners, politicians, ministers, ambassadors, diplomats, public policy think tanks, historians, artists and students as well as a think tank of children, in developing the future use of the project. In this way the building of the Sound Mirrors is just a central anchor of a much larger project, which bleeds out into many aspects of life in the communities around it – as well as the larger international community.
In recent years post September 11th world politics have changed the political and social climate of the UK and France in Europe, and caused a tightening of national borders, free speech and community relations. In such a climate, the power of the individual and the power of human communication are important in humanizing and reframing the institutions, structures and technologies that surround us.
The project has evolved from a pre-war acoustic technology that left a string of forgotten concrete mirrors along the south east coast of England. Known as "listening ears' they were constructed as an early warning system against an airborne invasion across the English Channel, and collected sound in giant concrete dishes operated by trained listeners to pick up distant noises from the sky. Today they stand listening out to Sea like strange metaphors for Cross Channel relations. In their very human atmosphere they seem to be yearning for contact, like radio telescopes listening out for extra terrestrial voices.
The Sound Mirrors Project is about rediscovering this piece of military history as a human, not heroic, endeavor and it is an attempt to reinvent this redundant technology for a new day. The project will build two new Sound Mirrors. One will be placed in Folkstone, filling a gap in the existing chain of mirrors along the English coast. The other will be placed on the coast of France, approximately 25 miles across the Channel. Visitors to the new mirrors will not only be able to listen to the sky - they will be able to talk across the sea to those standing on a listening platform in front of the other mirror, on the other side of the Channel.
The two new mirrors will turn a long forgotten defence technology into an instrument for communication between two countries. They will turn the historically psychologically charged geographic space between England and France into a cross Channel performance space – a sort of Hyde Park Corner across the sea.
The project has so far involved engineers, architects, technologists, specialists, local communities, town planners, politicians, ministers, ambassadors, diplomats, public policy think tanks, historians, artists and students as well as a think tank of children, in developing the future use of the project. In this way the building of the Sound Mirrors is just a central anchor of a much larger project, which bleeds out into many aspects of life in the communities around it – as well as the larger international community.
In recent years post September 11th world politics have changed the political and social climate of the UK and France in Europe, and caused a tightening of national borders, free speech and community relations. In such a climate, the power of the individual and the power of human communication are important in humanizing and reframing the institutions, structures and technologies that surround us.
