Inquiry

• The Whispering Gallery of St Paul’s Cathedral, London

  Paul Elliman

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    Paul Elliman & Avigail Moss for the Architectural Association, 2007

  Continuing an interest in voice, technology, language and the built environment, ‘Voices Falling Through the Air’ presents the whispering gallery effect as part of a prehistory of the electronically transmitted voice.

  Certain features of the physical world, from air to architecture, have always played a part in the distribution or displacement of our spoken word. When Marconi’s first radio signals crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1902, they were guided by radio waves that traversed the parallel conducting surfaces formed by the earth and the ionosphere. This guiding action is connected to the way sound clings to a curved wall — the mechanism responsible for the ‘whispering gallery’ effect in St Paul’s Cathedral and the ‘echo wall’ at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

  St John the Evangelist is said to have heard the Book of Revelation spoken to him in a cave on the Greek island of Patmos.

  In Apollinaire’s short story ‘The Moon King’, a device allows sounds from locations all over the world to be heard in the subterranean passages of a mountain.

  Jules Verne used the whispering gallery effect in an episode of the classic tale Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

  At Lade near Folkestone on the English south coast a set of concrete listening ears, experimental acoustic radar devices used to give advance warning of enemy aircraft, survive from the First World War.

  Electronic voice phenomenon (EVP): making full use of the term medium, some spiritualists claim that spirit communication requires the use of an electronic device.

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    St Paul’s Cathedral, London