This next work is called 'Look Up My Nose'.
The inventor Alexander Graham Bell was a strong advocate for a phonetic system called Visible Speech. This system was created by his father Melville Bell, and was used to teach Deaf people to speak with their voices.
The shape of this sculpture has been modelled from photographs of Alexander and Melville’s noses. It looks like a very strange oversized cluster of noses that are hanging down from the ceiling like a bell.
It is about two metres in diameter. It is a pale green colour. The colour was chosen by the artists to symbolise the kind of green you might find in a hospital because they wanted to allude to the medical perspective on deafness. A view that sees deafness only as something that needs to be cured.
The work is playing with the English saying to “look down one’s nose”, meaning to think of oneself as superior. It refers to the Bells’ disdain for sign language users.
Although it's not always associated with sign language, the nose does play an important role in conveying grammar, vocabulary and nuanced expression in sign language. For example, in British Sign Language, an upwards flick of the index finger off the nose can mean ‘stuck-up’.
This sculpture was designed with an audio engineer and drum maker, and it has an automated drum stick inside that plays a sequence of beats on a timer, every 10 minutes. It has been designed to create a strong bass frequency while simultaneously pushing air out through the nostrils.
If you follow the tactile line to the next stop you will be in the best place to feel the vibrations and the reverberating air from the nostrils as you stand beneath it.