Sound installation, 2004
Objects design: Zarko
Landscape design: Pascale Langrand and François Schelameur
The Garden of the Navel is a collective project based on an imaginary mythology that ironically names Pougne-Hérisson (a hamlet of 200 inhabitants) as the homeland of tales, where “all stories come from, and where they should come back”. The Stories Machine is an interactive sound installation which composes a soundscape with the stories that the visitors leave themselves. Several microphones are placed in the garden, in which visitors are invited to leave a story of their own, lasting anything from a few seconds to a few minutes, that will then be stored by the installation. As soon as it has been recorded, each story lives its own life and occupies the space. The lifetime of a story is unlimited: it is always heard immediately after it has been recorded, but it may reappear weeks or months later. The space of the Garden develops and grows with time: it is nurtured, visited and searched by the visitors themselves, like a talking landscape, organic and unpredictable.
