Familiar Strangers
2007
25 channel sound installation
Speakers, speaker wire, 5 x DVD players, 5 x 5.1 surround sound amplifiers
Approx. 5:00min loop

Familiar Strangers is a sound installation that presents personal and intimate stories of isolation as a collective experience. Installed on twenty-five small speakers, voices can be heard telling moving, revealing, mundane, humorous and depressing accounts of isolation – either about extended periods of time or just brief moments of being alone.

After interviewing extended family, friends and colleagues, each recorded story was subsequently transcribed and provided to a different participant to read into a microphone – reading the story as if it was their own. Presented as a sound installation the multiple voices resonate with each individual's attempt to inhabit another person's reality - if only temporarily and with the aid of a script.