School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences

Sing the Gloaming at Sonica Festival

As part of the Sonica Festival in Glasgow, Professor Simon Kirby will be giving guided tours of the art installation Sing the Gloaming alongside his project partner, artists and musician Tommy Perman.

Sing the Gloaming draws upon Simon’s ground-breaking research at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Language Evolution into the cultural evolution of language, including phonaesthemes; sounds or sound sequences within words that directly invoke a certain meaning. The project was a collaboration between Simon, Tommy and, another artist/musician, Rob St. John.

The installation allows the audience to walk amongst a series of sculptures that contain recordings of sung phonaesthemes. Hear Simon and Tommy talk more about Sing the Gloaming in the video below.

The tours will be held on Friday 11 March (6pm) and Sunday 20 March (2pm) at The Hidden Gardens. Tickets are free and available via Eventbrite.

Simon Kirby

Simon Kirby is Head of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. He co-founded the Centre for Language Evolution and teaches an understanding of human language as the result of evolutionary processes.

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