100 Voices, Our Collective Story

Presented with the Cape Ann Museum and the CAM Teen Council, 100 Voices, Our Collective Story was an immersive public artwork of light and sound by Harbor Voices that was created with community voices at senior centers, the offices of public officials, public schools, nonprofit groups, and historical societies. Ancestral and recent local immigration, migration, and origin stories specific to Cape Ann history were collected. Storytellers were invited to share in any language, resulting in a multilingual, inclusive exhibition that shares a wide range of global immigration perspectives.

In the Janet & William Ellery James Center, an eight-minute show featuring a “babble” of languages overlapping into the sound of crashing waves was played on loop. Visitors could walk in at any moment and stay as long as they liked. The sound installation immersed exhibition visitors in local stories while lasers visualized the web of connectivity between stories. Lights from opposite corners of the room connected and traveled through space and time together, exemplifying the similitudes that exist amongst community members. Each story, old or new, was represented by a beam of light.

100 Voices, Our Collective Story was on display from Friday, May 12 – Sunday, May 14, 2023 and Friday, May 19 – Sunday, May 21, 2023 at the Cape Ann Museum Green, 13 Poplar Street, Gloucester, MA.