With a mysterious atmosphere and a cinematic feeling, The Missing Voice shows you the dark side of the busy city of London. I would describe this experience as a trip back in time. Starting with the fact that this audio was created 22 years ago, and the film noir feeling of the 1930s and 1940s that the entire narrative has, creates an immersive experience that makes you feel in a different moment and time than your modern reality.
The Missing Voice starts in Whitechapel´s library, which nowadays is Whitechapel´s Gallery. You start hearing the voice of a woman, who is going to be your guide through this entire experience. With an immersive use of sounds such as steps, whispers and people talking in the background, noises of the audio and reality blends together, making you believe that you are part of this enigmatic walk. Our guide makes you walk through small and quiet Whitechapel’s streets, Brick Lane and even a church, everything full of descriptions and key phrases such as “there is no time”, that makes you feel inside of a vivid atmosphere of anxiety since you feel like someone is following you or staring at you.
I am not going in-depth with the story of the audio, because I feel like this is something that you should do if you live in London, and explaining the entire experience will take out the magic of this walking activity. On the other hand, as someone new to the city, I did not get lost at all and was really clear to follow since you can read the names of the streets that are around you. I recommend doing this walk on a typical rainy day in London, I feel like it gives more of a mysterious vibe to the experience and makes you get more involved in the noir atmosphere. What I enjoyed the most was the way the woman that guides you not only described what she sees but also how she talked about memories of her childhood, her personality and even dreams, making you feel like you can trust this unknown person that you are trapped within this situation. I would even say you adopt certain aspects of her, like her quiet and analytic nature, adding a roll play feeling to the audio.
Factors such as the past of time and COVID affecting everything around us, make this audio impossible to be followed as it was supposed to be followed in 1999. But this piece is so well constructed that you can enjoy it perfectly even with these factors in mind, you just need a bit of imagination.
To experience this audio walk, you can listen to it for free on Sound Cloud (link of the audio: https://soundcloud.com/artangel-2/talk-the-missing-voice-01). Here you will find the first part of the audio, the last two parts are next on the automatic playlist. To start this activity you have to be in front of Whitechapel´s Gallery, which in the audio is referred to as Whitechapel´s library (Library that closed in 2005), even though the beginning of this guided experience is not accurate since the library no longer exists and getting inside of the gallery is impossible due to COVID, you can still perfectly follow the rest of the audio.
Enjoying the audio on itself is pretty straightforward, you just have to let yourself go and follow every single indication that the audio gives you, after that, you will start feeling the magic of it.
In my case, this audio was commissioned to me by Clare Qualmann (walking artist/researcher), and now is my turn to recommend this experience since it is safe during the pandemic, is free and is a unique activity that will make you see Whitechapel in a totally different way.