Polyglot was commissioned by the Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, UK) for the show Babel – contemporary art and the journeys of communication.
The piece is concerned with artificial or constructed languages which have been invented over many centuries in attempts to allow communication between speakers in different tongues.
Despite much effort, by many individuals and groups, it is reasonable to say that there is still no universal language with which we can all communicate.
Polyglot graphically demonstrates these repeated failures, by way of a classroom of animatronic toy parrots. Authoritarian looking tannoy speakers shout out the names of several invented language, Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido, Volapuk, and the parrots repeat them back amongst themselves, the speech becoming ever more distorted until it ends in a meaningless babble. The whole cycle is then repeated with another language, in much the same way as humans have continued to come up with fresh ways to aid communication, which despite the high intentions seem doomed to failure.