Project brings England's historic statues to life | WPN World People News

An innovative project has seen statues across the country ‘come alive’ and ‘speak’ to passers-by.

Sherlock Holmes, Isaac Newton, Peter Pan, Queen Victoria – as well as Hodge the Cat, a goat and Whittington’s cat are some of the statues to find a voice.

Arts organisation Sing London has commissioned some of the nation's most celebrated writers and actors to animate 35 public statues across London and Manchester. Pass a Talking Statue, swipe your phone on a nearby tag and hey presto: your phone rings - it's Queen Victoria on the line... or Peter Pan... or Abe Lincoln...

Using drama, humour and location technology, Talking Statues breathes new life into the statues that surround us all. This project also sets out to explore how Near Field Communication (NFC) – available in the latest iPhones - has the potential to overcome barriers to culture and the arts by animating public spaces and forging new cultural links to engage audiences. For example, a statue of Samuel Johnson might link the user to the British Library’s copy of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language.

NFC’s potential also lies in its ease of use. Unlike QR codes (which require users to download a reader then scan a 2D barcode) NFC enables content to be streamed directly from the web via a wireless network (3G, 4G, Wi-Fi). Through Talking Statues, the swipe of a smartphone enables spontaneous and immediate access to artistic experiences in public spaces.

Members of the public have also been invited to give ‘voice’ to the statues by contributing short monologues for four statues. The winners of this competition will see their recordings available at the statue before Christmas.

Aiming to reach at least 100,000 users, Talking Statues is a collaborative project between Sing London, Antenna International and the University of Leicester’s Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG).

The project has been made possible by the Digital R&D Find for the Arts, a strategic partnership encouraging organisations with arts projects, digital technology companies and academic researchers to collaborate on experiments from which the wider arts and cultural sector can learn.

Source: Arts & Humanities Research Council