EN / FI
2024 · Tartu Art Museum, Estonia · Interactive multichannel sound installation
Lundahl & Seitl in artistic collaboration with Jaakko Autio
A child kneels at a well and speaks into the dark water. The voice sets the surface trembling, and a moment later it returns somewhere else in the museum, inside a wall. Memories of the Leaning Building was made for children and their families: a place where a voice is received, kept, and allowed to become part of the building.
Exhibition film and artist interview
Jaakko Autio discusses the work in this exhibition film. Excerpt from the Estonian Museum Awards 2024 television programme, broadcast on Estonian Television (ETV) on 10 April 2025. Video: Tartu Art Museum.
The exhibition’s young guides lead the way through Spirits of the Fault Line by Lundahl & Seitl, part of their headphone series Symphony of a Lost Room, and through Memories of the Leaning Building. Estonian and English subtitles. Video: Tartu Art Museum.
The Listening Well
The two wells are water loudspeakers. Microphones hidden inside them capture the visitor’s voice, and the water itself carries the sound, so speaking becomes something you can see and touch. The basins are painted with Mussou Black, a paint that absorbs 99.6 percent of light. From above they lose their depth and read as openings in the floor, while the water inside keeps moving.
The Whispering Wall
The voices spoken into the wells are recorded, stored and played back through resonators fixed to the wall itself. The wall is the loudspeaker. To hear, you lean in and put your ear to the surface, and what you hear may be the voice of a child who passed by an hour or a month earlier. An encounter at one point in the exhibition leaves a trace at another.
Spirits of the Fault Line
Alongside the installation, children could take a headphone journey through the building, guided by voices in Estonian or English. The headphone work Spirits of the Fault Line is by Lundahl & Seitl. I built its headphone system, software, equipment and technical installation.
My contribution
I developed the water loudspeakers, the resonator-based sound system for the whispering wall, and the interactive system that records visitors’ voices and distributes them for playback. The whole environment ran on a 16-channel wireless headphone network and four 10-channel sound cards. My work brought together the physical behaviour of sound, the materials of the installation and the conditions in which a visitor could approach, speak and listen.
The work was developed in dialogue with Lundahl & Seitl and the exhibition team. The museum team contributed to the construction and spatial design of the wells and gallery structures.
Curatorial research
Curator Hanna-Liis Kont examines the collaborative development of Memories of the Leaning Building and the accompanying sound journey in her peer-reviewed article How Does Art Support Social and Emotional Learning? A Sound Journey Created with Children and Their Families (Methis, 2025). The research considers participation, trust and learning in work developed with local families.
Read the article and English summary · Full article PDF
The full text is in Estonian; an English summary appears at the end.
Exhibition and credits
Work: Memories of the Leaning Building, 2024
Artists: Lundahl & Seitl (Christer Lundahl and Martina Seitl), in artistic collaboration with Jaakko Autio
Jaakko Autio: water loudspeakers, whispering-wall sound system, interactive recording and playback, headphone system
Exhibition: The Secrets of the Leaning Building, Tartu Art Museum, 9 August 2024 to 2 February 2025
Curator: Hanna-Liis Kont
Exhibition architect: Kaisa Sööt
Project: Creative Connections, European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024
Photos: Evelin Lumi; studio and detail photos Jaakko Autio
The group exhibition received the Exhibition of the Year 2024 award at the Estonian Museums Annual Awards.
