VANCOUVER, Wash. – “Remembering the Dead,” a sound art installation by John F. Barber, faculty member of the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver, will be exhibited Nov. 17 – Dec. 30 at Boomerang Gallery in downtown Vancouver. The work memorializes victims of gun violence in the United States by displaying and speaking their names.
This is the first local exhibition of “Remembering the Dead,” which debuted at the international conference and festival of the Irish Sound Science and Technology Association, Derry, Northern Ireland, in September. The work was also invited for exhibition at the Paul Watkins Gallery at Winona State University in Minnesota.
“Remembering the Dead” is displayed in a wooden cabinet that recalls both a bullet and tombstone. The cabinet houses a computer, a monitor and a speaker. Each victim's name, age, place and date of death is displayed on the monitor while the victim’s name is spoken via text-to-speech technology. After its display, the victim’s name is added to a memorial list in the monitor's background.
"This process continues, eternally,” Barber said. "With each name displayed, the list grows longer. With each name spoken, we are reminded of the human cost of gun violence.
“One of the individuals memorialized in this work was killed in downtown Vancouver,” he said. “The mass killing that prompted the work occurred in Roseburg, Oregon.”
Further information about “Remembering the Dead” is available .
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MEDIA CONTACT(S)
John Barber, Creative Media and Digital Culture Program, 360-546-9645, jfbarber@eaze.net
Brenda Alling, Office of Marketing and Communications, 360-546-9601, brenda_alling@wsu.edu