[[[murmur]]]

“All the most interesting stuff you hear is stuff that is whispered to you.”

That is the idea behind [murmur], a Canada-wide audio project where anyone with access to a cell-phone can dial a number, punch in a code and hear a personal story—as told by the person—in the place where it happened—of an experience in their community.

“What we’re trying to do is to build an entire, opposite, one-a-kind, popular mythology of a city at a citizen level. It’s something that’s never been done, and that’s what people crave,” says James Roussel, Art Director for [murmur].

The project was launched in Toronto’s unique Kensington Market. A location as organic as it is interminable.

[murmur] is not a Ken Burns style celebration of epic events sentimentally narrated by a local celebrity, or that guy who does the Werthurs Originals commercials. It’s an acknowledgment of individual human experience specific to that time and place, made available to all.

“What makes it dramatic is that it’s not some voice actor. To hear someone actually kinda stutter and be real, that’s how people actually talk. There’s an accessibility there,” says Roussel.

[murmur] stories range from historical to hysterical, from embarrassing to esoteric.

One story, which can be found at College and Augusta, recounts a late night “deer of the wild” sighting in the Market.

Another describes an encounter with a local “character” who upon engaging a local store clerk in a religious conversation proclaims his love of “cleavage and Canadian beavage.”

Upon hearing [murmur] it is clear that there is no commercial agenda attached. It is simply trying to preserve and promote humanity in a Torontolandscape that is being renovated, remodelled and removed faster than it can be appreciated.

That said; Kensington Market is an almost painfully obvious location for such a project.

“I really like [murmur] as an idea,” says Andrea Wilson, a student who lives near the Market. “I really think that community is built through shared experience.” But adds, “Kensington is the obvious; safe choice for the project. The same project, with the same audience in RegentParkor Parkdale might be more challenging and actually help create a sense of belonging.”

But with instalments at Toronto Harbourfront, Vancouver’s Chinatown and Rue St. Laurent in Montreal, [murmur] is establishing itself as more than a self-indulgent bulletin board for the scene-eating hipsters and the avant-bored.

But is the medium trumping the message?

Roussel and Co.are also exploring less intuitive locations for the project.

“We were talking about suburbia and we were like; ‘what kind of story is there to tell in suburbia?’ But if any space needs this it is suburbia. These so-called faceless areas of the city even the antiseptic downtown business core.”

Roussel even insists the lacquered world of Yorkville would be a great home for [murmur].

“There are a lot of spots in Yorkville itself that are prefect for talking about how time changes the context of space,” says Roussel. “It starts off as this little kind of peasant workers cottage, then become a disgusting hovel, then in the sixties it becomes a place where somebody OD’s and shits themselves on a balcony, in the eighties it became some guy snorting cocaine in the bathroom, now it’s some conspicuous consumption guy avoiding carbs at all cost on a patio.”

Wilsonsees the use of cell-phones as counter-productive to the kind of humanity [murmur] is extolling. “The cell-phone element kind of threw me off. Personally I find cell phone isolating and cold.”

Roussel cites his own catharsis as a validation of [murmur]’s chosen medium.

“I fucking despise cell phones!” says Roussel. “Here is an opportunity for me to make this rather complex computer in your pocket an access to information about the city. It’s a way to subvert the heavy weight of technology that we are feeling the burden of everyday. Let’s use these things to not be an irritant, let’s make them a very personal portal into something that is very significant.”

So make your way to Kensington Market and check out [murmur]. But beware! The [murmur] signs—located just above eye level—are easy to miss. So, as you amble through the busy lanes of Kensington, keep your eye on the road. Nobody wants to hear the story of how they saw you get hit by a car.

Images courtesy and © copyright [murmur]