Attempting Ziggurats 4 is an installation based on a story by John Barth entitled "Glossolalia," which is made up of a set of oblique and somewhat desperate words that have a familiar ring to them. As each section of the spoken text of the story unfolds, underlying sounds of social activities are gradually folded into its rhythm.
The various versions of Attempting Ziggurats find their basis in the story of the Tower of Babel and its ongoing reverberations in American culture. The pivotal moment of the story, the instant that language becomes noise, is one that is forever enshrined in American society through its incorporation of cultural difference as a central component of the concept and fabric of the nation. Here, that babble of noise repeatedly coalesces into the rhythms of the Lord's Prayer, a text which, prior to 1962, was recited daily in United States public school classrooms.
(Source: Artist's description, ELO_AI)
