The sound installation ‘The Telephone Game’, is an exploration of fake news inspired by the children’s game with the same name. The piece playfully reveals how disinformation is created and how stories become distorted as they spread.

 

The installation features 10 speakers or headphones, each playing one by one a different version of a fictional news article recorded with high-school students in Antwerp, Belgium. The article, filled with intrigue and inspired by the complexities of geopolitics, is passed along in a whisper chain.

 

Each student shares their memory of the article with the next, gradually distorting the narrative into something increasingly absurd or comical, shaped by their boundless imagination. As the story evolves across 10 speakers, it reveals how easy the truth distorts through repetition. 

 

The work mirrors our times, where stories spread rapidly via social media and digital platforms, transforming with every repetition and sharing. It illustrates as well how quickly roles can completely shift between “perpetrator” and “victim” or “the good” and “the bad,” exposing the fragile, fluid nature of truth in the digitally overstimulated age.

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Project supported by VOCATIO Foundation

Installed at the public library of Antwerp, Belgium 'Permeke'