This interactive installation follows the story of my great-grandfather, James Albert Kermode, when he served as a chief engineer aboard merchant ships during World War II.* The work consists of three replicas of field telephone boxes. Each handset delivers a message to the listener, based on the content of Airgraphs** sent by James Albert to his daughter Margaret (my grandmother).

Through this work – drawn from the archive of my own family history – I seek to explore how shifts in technology over the past hundred years have impacted how we communicate, especially when geographically separated. The audience are returned to a one-way form of communication, as was prevalent in the early twentieth century context: they listen without the ability to respond in the moment.

My aim with this work is to question whether the ease, immediacy and brevity with which we can communicate and respond in the twenty-first century context is, in fact, diluting our messages to each other. How can we select and archive those which hold the same weight as letters written by our predecessors, in order to preserve them for future generations?

I want the audience – if just for a moment – to feel what it would be like to be separated from someone they love and unable to communicate with them in real time. If this was our reality, might we value the time we spend together differently?

* As a chief engineer on Cunard Brocklebank merchant ships, he spent nine months of each year away from his family. During the war he served on shipping lines that supplied the Allied forces; he was interned after his ship was torpedoed, and was later awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his service.

** A system devised in World War II to save space on aircraft: letters written on specially designed stationery were shrunk onto microfilm to be transported internationally, then enlarged and printed before being sent to the addressee.