A dark room is so much more than it first seems. With patience and curiosity, it will come to life. In between four walls is a Cuban household, filled with objects passed down over generations that hold memories of the hands that kept them. As one walks through the room and interacts with its objects, the space begins to come alive. Visitors will take their own time and make their own way through the quiet evidence of a lived-in space, uncovering hidden moments waiting to be found.

Over the course of the piece, a clock runs a day in fast forward, and the room shape-shifts from the 1980s to 1990s and onwards, slowly, steadily, almost unnoticed. Time moves differently here. It is a piece that lives in the in-between, in the narrow space that treads the line of physical and virtual and in the cracks that separate days, years and decades. And it is precisely this in-betweenness that cultivates portals and the possibility of walking through a door and into a past waiting to be touched.

“The Room of a Thousand Voices” was directed by Pavel Méndez. Additional credits include creative technologist Shipeng Ouyang, 3D artist Taimy Valdés, Unreal Engine optimisation by Cristian Cuevas and interactive design by Peter Muthesius, Salvador Revelo, and Christopher Theophanous.

Dana Melaver