Manifest (what have we here) is a site-specific commission that spreads six channels of sound throughout the expanse of a soaring atrium connecting two buildings and three floors via a winding industrial staircase. The work features a collection of voices emanating from stairwell landings. They mutter to themselves as they each formulate very different proposals for “total” works of art to fill the atrium, drawing inspiration from familiar tropes in contemporary art practice. Individual voices periodically break through the chatter to announce their ideas, which unfurl distinctively up, down, and across the narrow expanse through both visual and experiential description. The evocative delivery of each proposal explodes the boundaries of the ancient tradition of ekphrasis — the rhetorical description of a work of visual art — as each speaker gradually becomes a sonic embodiment of the work they describe.

The installation was commissioned by Mass MoCA for the exhibition The Space Between, 2016