TITLE: Her Voice

‘Breathing life into the spirits of the dead — not least those entombed in our machines — is as general a definition of animation as might be desired’, according to Sean Cubitt; his words are echoed within Her Voice as we are reminded that ‘the voices of the dead move through all of us but not everyone has the capacity to listen’. Her Voice is a collaboration between artists/researchers Katerina Athanasopoulou and Eleni Ikoniadou, scored by Savvas Metaxas and commissioned by the audiovisual group AUDINT. It is an animated short film that is haunted by nostalgically-charged technology and future-facing instruments where past, present and future co-exist. Her Voice draws its vision from Russian ‘Maskirovka’, a military strategy of deception through camouflage and confusion, reflected in the digital photorealism of the veil, which simultaneously reveals and conceals the ghost that animates it. Bringing together animation, motion capture, simulation and digital costume, the technological heart of the film is the telephone as the grandmother of the internet, a medium that produced some of the first tele-ghosts. Created for gallery space, the portrait format of Her Voice anticipates the peripatetic visitor who performs their own choreography of entrances and exits within the space of the exhibition.