Running Time: 11:18:01 (Click the image above to listen)
Until a few months ago, I couldn’t recall what my grandmother’s voice sounded like even though it was once comforting and familiar. Then I found an audio tape recorded five years before I was born- so my grandmother’s voice was younger and different but similar enough to recognize.
A year earlier, I created “Pocket Full of Mumbles” to preserve my own voice. The 11 hour recording is composed of me reading every word in the dictionary. I imagined that one day the words could be digitized and cataloged in a program that could have “me” say anything one of my ancestors might want to hear me say. My reading of each is word is without emotion or urgency so any sentences I might say will be without the same presence as I had if living. The whole exercise is a meaninglessly exchange of words and time for connection and memory.
ANTHONY FARIS 