CROSSED LINES
(Sam Meech, Marilene Gaudet, 2015)

'PART OF '"ON EST TOUS UN GROUPE D'AMIS ICI" (WE ARE ALL FRIENDS HERE)', Montreal 2015

CROSSED LINES is a sound installation housed in a Bell telephone booth that invites passers by to listen to interviews with a variety of people in downtown Montreal. By referring to the directory, users can dial and listen to the thoughts of tourists, strippers, small business oweners, artists, homeless, protesters, police and more, all whilst seeing the sound visualised in realtime as a knitted waveform.

The interviews were recorded as part of a 6 week research residency in May / Juen 2015, and build a complex portrait of the city's downtown district. There are many overlapping concerns, but also conflicting perspectives, on everything from art to gentrification, policing to protest, and tourism to trade. Notably in the 5 years since recording, a number of the small business traders have disappeared from the downtown area - a sign of the changing economics of Montreal.

The installation was originally housed in Place de la Paix, Montreal, as part of ESPACE COMMUN. CROSSED LINES is one of a series of works , collectively entitled - "On est tous un groupe d’amis ici” (We are all friends here) - created with MTL artist Marilene Gaudet, that also include knitted textile installations, and a stop motion knitted animation.