From the Mouths of Monkeys is an 8-channel audio installation commissioned by the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy in Boston, MA, that combines music and spoken voices. The piece is an exploration of personal belief systems using the Chinese Zodiac – and the Year of the Monkey – as a jumping off point.
I recorded conversations with a dozen people (from 0 to 84 years old) who were born in the year of the monkey and asked them questions about their beliefs and the origins of those beliefs, whether they be zodiac-driven, religious, scientific, etc. The topics ranged from fate vs. self-determination to linearity vs. cycles to life after death and many more.
I then composed a four-part site-specific piece of music which acts as an environment within which the voices are arranged by various criteria, both semantic and aesthetic. The four parts are spaced along a leafy walking path in the Greenway, providing listeners with a journey of sorts as they pass by and through the piece. Every utterance listeners hear – in similarity and difference – comes from the mouth of a “monkey”.