Duncan Speakman and Émilie Grenier began their cross-european artist residency with three weeks at The Pervasive Media Studio. On Wednesday 23 February they gave a work-in-progress talk, an introduction to We Are Forests, the new sonic artwork to be developed through the residency, which incorporates supported time at Nimk (Netherlands Art Media Institute), 5daysoff and KIBU (Kitchen Budapest).

As the event took place in their third week of development, the idea had already been taken through various stages of research and testing.

Their initial idea was to create an audio connection between a number of strangers in one physical space. The premise is to transcend or re-contextualise the constant stream of information we receive and send out into the internet. What happens when you have to voice a status-update, rather than type it? The voice becomes the vehicle, anonymous, without a profile or photo. Can this experience capture the weight of the human voice? What would you say if you could unobtrusively whisper something into a stranger’s ear?

The idea is to curate silence: creating context, rather than content so the piece becomes a dialogue between artists and audience and the content is created in real-time. Questions they still hope to address are: How do you encourage people to speak? How do you frame or guide the experience? The talk provided an excellent space for people to voice their own ideas and give feedback.

With the assistance of The Pervasive Media Studio’s Dan Williams, a test was rigged. They set up a network: each person used their own mobile phone to call the same number, connecting to one big mobile conference call.

Using College Green as the play area, they conducted two tests that will feed back into the work. Both groups responded differently to the piece, the first group were hesitant and fairly silent, the second were comedic and playful. It is the extremes of crowd dynamics that Duncan and Emilie must encounter to rigorously test and refine the piece.

You can participate by taking part in online experiments on the We Are Forests website. As a cumulative, evolving piece, dialogues in many different geographical and digital locations are essential.

Duncan and Émilie are currently resident at 5daysoff festival in Amsterdam, conducting workshops to create lo-fi sound machines. After spending time at each location they will be back in Bristol in May to showcase the outcomes.

You can follow the project by using the #weareforests hashtag on twitter, or keep an eye on their blog: http://nimk.nl/blog/weareforests/