Babel in Reverse: Global Voices at Pratt Institute is a new iteration of Babel in Reverse by artist Joseph Morris and in collaboration with Pratt Institute’s School of Liberal Arts and Science, featuring the voices of hundreds of speakers of endangered languages spoken throughout the city of New York, with additional audio from international students recorded at the university. It features a real-time projection-mapped animation of waves rippling outward from each speaker as they speak one of two hundred recorded languages.

Using custom electronic speakers, Babel uses language recordings documented by the Endangered Language Alliance, the Virtual Language Observatory, and Pratt Institute. As people approach the installation, the sound is a whispering babel, with dozens of recorded voices speaking many languages. However, as one experiences the installation, the babel fades, and individual voices and languages are heard. As participants move through the installation, the speakers fade in and out to highlight individual languages, allowing visitors to listen to the voices of New Yorkers reciting personal stories, poems, and fables of languages we’re accustomed to hearing, as well as the sound of languages that NYC expects to lose in a generation or two.

To view and listen to the full language audio of interviews sourced by The Endangered Language Alliance, please see their interactive map, Languages of New York City, which also contains links to videos of each selected language.

Contact Joseph Morris for more information or to support and present his work.