Forum Institutional

Voice Gems - Messages of Hope exhibition at Davos 2022 turns voices into gemstone sculptures

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2022

At Davos 2022, you will be able to experience a range of vocal portraits and messages from a remarkable group of people.

Joseph Fowler
Head, Arts and Culture, World Economic Forum
This article is part of: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting

Listen to the article

  • Voice Gems is an innovative curated vocal archive which translates voice recordings into precious gemstone sculptures.
  • 'Messages of Hope' is a collaborative digital exhibition between London-born new media artist Harry Yeff and the World Economic Forum.
  • At this year's Annual Meeting in Davos you will be able to experience a range of vocal portraits and messages from a remarkable group of people.

Our voice has more power and potential than most of us realize. It affects others, just as theirs affects us.

The human voice is an incredibly sensitive and powerful instrument that enables us to communicate and connect with one another as well as convey empathy, understanding and a whole spectrum of other emotions and feelings.

Have you read?

Humans are unique in the animal kingdom in that we communicate verbally through language. Scientists are not certain when humans first spoke, but they speculate that language began two million years ago. Today, with close to 8 billion voices worldwide and 6,500 identified languages spoken globally, never has it been more appropriate to celebrate the sheer breadth of the human voice.

As we come together in Davos, for the first time in over two years, it’s important all voices are given a platform to be heard.

The pandemic has brought far-reaching changes. In a world full of uncertainty and tension, personal dialogue is more important than ever.

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman.

We so often take our voices for granted. We open our mouths and words flow forth. Yet our voices can be one of the most powerful instruments we possess and represents one of nature’s greatest achievements.

The Messages of Hope exhibition at Davos 2022 has been commissioned and designed by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Harry Yeff, also known as Reeps100, an artist who specialises in the cross section of the human voice, technology and performance.

Through his work he explores the immense potential of the human voice both within and beyond the realms of the spoken language. Pushing it to its extreme and forcing us to question how we communicate and connect to each other.

Voice Gems is an innovative project that allows the voice to be sculpted and preserved as 3D digital gemstones. Created by Harry Yeff and Trung Bao, the Voice Gems system sculpts over 200,000 particles with fingerprint-like voice data to create the colours and form of each gemstone.

The Messages of Hope exhibition at Davos 2022 is a visually stunning way to inspire dialogues about value and humanity. The seventeen voices featured and their messages, have been transformed into unique one of a kind works of art. Digital precious objects. Voice Gems.

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Stay up to date:

Innovation

Related topics:
Forum InstitutionalArts and Culture
Share:
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Innovation is affecting economies, industries and global issues
A hand holding a looking glass by a lake
Crowdsource Innovation
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
World Economic Forum logo
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

Forum Stories: A new home for ideas, solutions and analysis on the world's biggest issues

Gayle Markovitz and Vesselina Stefanova Ratcheva

November 21, 2024

The mindset change businesses need for a climate-resilient future

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2024 World Economic Forum