Whispering Galleries is an interactive artwork developed specifically for the city of New Haven by Brad Bouse and Amaranth Borsuk, the creators of Between Page and Screen, a book of augmented reality poems.
Whispering Galleries allows visitors to engage with an anonymous diary from 1858. The keeper of this diary worked with his hands: as a woodworker making handles for tools, sawing lumber, and sweeping out the shop; as a violinist making music at intimate gatherings and church occasions; and as a composer, writing pieces for performance at the local school. In daily entries, the author's week is measured out by hand-work.
Others come in and out of his shop and home: customers and friends mentioned in passing, whose presence reveals the way a New England community of the mid-nineteenth century relied on careful manual labor for its members' livelihood and enrichment. The voice of this diary sends whispers to the present through erasure poems that draw these themes to the surface.