Talking Statues: Picking up the phone to Newton

Talking Statues is a project using playwrights, actors and mobile technology to put words into the mouths of several public statues around London and Manchester. The statues will begin to talk on 19 August and in order to hear them you need to swipe your smartphone over signs beneath the statues. Actors lending their voices to statues include Dominic West as Achilles in Hyde Park, Jeremy Paxman as John Wilkes in Fetter Lane and Patrick Stewart as the unknown soldier at Paddington Station.

This project sets out to explore how Near Field Communication (NFC) has the potential to overcome barriers to culture and the arts by animating public spaces and forging new cultural links to engage audiences. Through Talking Statues, which aims to reach at least 100,000 users, the swipe of a smartphone enables spontaneous and immediate access to artistic experiences in public spaces.

Talking Statues is a collaborative project between SING London, Antenna International and the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies.

Simon Russell Beale gives voice to Eduardo Paolozzi’s Newton statue in the British Library piazza. Photo: ©Tina Engström.

END

Would you like to explore London and beyond with a highly qualified and enthusiastic Blue Badge Tourist Guide? Use our Guide Match service to find the perfect one for you!

UPB

Ursula Petula Barzey is a Digital Marketing Consultant who enjoys all that London has to offer to its residents as well as visitors from all across the globe.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Most London Blue Badge Tourist Guides have had clients who want to get a snap of themselves by a red London phone box, often with Big Ben in the background. It is almost a rite of passage for a visitor to London and so the red boxes at the end of Whitehall often have long queues of people waiting outside for the chance to take a picture of themselves. The phone booths are rarely put to their original use – namely, to make phone calls. Now, of course, the mobile phone reigns supreme and most people have a smartphone in their pocket.

21 August 2018

Bloomberg Building & London Mithraeum Museum

London is growing skywards. With the high rental price for offices and a lack of space in the ‘square mile’ of the old City of London going up is the only practical alternative. Because of the soft clay in which London was built the maximum height of a skyscraper in the city used to be around 600 feet (200 metres) but new technology allows architects to design buildings – such as Enzo Piano’s The Shard – which are around 1000 feet (300 metres) high with further high rise structures being built and planned for the future.

Talking Statues: Picking up the phone to Newton

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You may also like

Red Telephone Boxes in London: From Bell’s Invention to a British Icon

Bloomberg Building & London Mithraeum Museum

Royal London Tour

Facebook

Twitter