Steve Parker’s interactive sound installations are playable sound sculptures that allow visitors to interact in an unexpected way.
Ghost Box is a playable sound sculpture modeled after a WWII era short wave radio. When touched, the sculpture plays different looped audio clips of coded transmissions, including Morse Code, spirituals of the Underground Railroad, the shofar, the Hebrew Shofar, and the Iron Age Celtic carnyx. Embedded into the sound sculpture are a series of musical scores on paper that incorporate maps and icons of the WWII Ghost Army, the functional wires of the attached electronics, and map pins.
Do you know what a ghost box is?
A ghost box is a communication tool used by paranormal investigators to speak to the dead. Typically, a ghost box is a modified portable AM/FM radio that continously scans the band. It is believed to create white noise and audio remnants from broadcast stations that entities are able to manipulate to create words and even entire sentences. In addition, Steve Parker ties his interactive sound installations to gloomy events from history. For example, the ‘Ghost Box,’ which is a sculpture he completed in 2018, references a “schematic drawing of a WWII-era radio.”
