As a part of the “Looking For America: Northwest Arkansas” art exhibition that travelled across four cities in December 2019 through March 2020, artist Amos Cochran invited the public to call a specific phone number and record a message describing what America means to them in just a few words.
At the conclusion of the exhibition, Amos brought the voices to life by compiling them into an audio and visual experience seen here.
Artist Statement
Amos Cochran
“American Thesaurus” is a curated collection of words, thoughts, and emotions representing what I feel it means to be American in my community: Having the ability to possess a unique voice representing individual ideas, that when mixed with others, create a larger and more complex vision. I invited anyone who was interested to share a recording of a few words that he or she feels is representative of the question at hand. Randomly sequenced together and presented through a single speaker, the individual voices form a new whole for us to experience. The idea is that a collection of voices merged offers a larger, more complex story than those voices in isolation ever could.
