Biology/Design, Art/Science, Tech/Society
Untold was an event and exhibit at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, sharing 18 stories from members of the Ithaca community: the elderly, unhoused, refugees, and Cornellians.
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Over the course of seven months, I and a team of four engineers listened and documented stories through photographs and audio. Each audio story was anonymous and paired with a photograph of the person’s hands. At the event, groups of strangers stood together, listening to the stories through headphones. Some of our interviewees were able to come to the event, without anyone knowing that they were the ones whose stories were being told.
Described by university officials as “the event that embodied the year”, Untold was attended by over 300 people on its opening night on November 18th, 2016. The video documenting the event has also reached thousands of people online. Attendees of the event wrote back over 100 notes to our interviewees, which we delivered back as gifts.
Untold was one of the most powerful and deeply beautiful experiences I’ve ever gotten to create. I feel grateful to have gotten to sit with the majority of the interviewees in the spaces they let me into, to ask them about their lives, to photograph their hands, and to design the exhibit that would impact so many in a year that felt void of hope.
Thank you for listening.