Sounds and Letters is what is best described as an audio scrap book. The piece consists of a box which holds five handwritten letters, a collection of photographs of Cushendall and the surrounding area and a CD with a recording of each letter by the author. On the lid of the box is a map of the Glens with the locations of the letters marked on the map. Each letter is to an unknown recipients and charts the time the author spent at the Tower. Each letter is written in a particular place and each recording of each letter is made in these places. Therefore, while listening to the recordings you not only hear the voice of the author describing the places in which they are in, but you hear the sounds of these places, frozen in time.

I wanted to make this piece because I had been reading about the Russian psychiatrist Lev Vygotsky's thoery of language and thought. Vygotsky argued that as adults we internalise our thought processes which as children we speak aloud. The British psycholgist Charles Fernyhough theorises that this thought process is sounded out silently inside of us as our 'inner voice'. And the research of scientist Luc Steel has highlighted that this is almost a universal human phenomenon, being experienced even by people who are deaf from birth.

                   Lev Vygotsky

Sounds and Letters vocalises the voice we hear while reading letters, that of their author. Often while reading a letter from someone we know, we hear their voice as if they were reading to us inside out head - our 'inner voice' sounding out the words as we read. however, if we were to read a letter from an unknown author to an unknown recipient what voice might we hear? Our own? That of a friend? in Sounds and Letters you hear the actual voice of the author, but surrounded by the sounds of the places they describe. How would we then imagine this author amongst the sounds of place? A place frozen in time, captured in a moment.

Below are images and audio from the project. The piece is now in the Tower for visitors to discover. (The audio is available by clicking on the links).