Ever had a thought you wish you could share, without fear of repurcussions from those around you? Ever wish those thoughts could be projected on a huge board to be read by travellers at your local train station?
Well, the lucky visitors to Brighton station now have that option. As part of the city’s annual digital festival, a large board installed above the board of train times is showing the public’s anonymous confessions, from today until 27 September.
The board is titled the Waiting Wall, and its designers, musician and software developer Alan Donohoe and Steven Parker, say they were inspired by philosopher’s Alain de Botton’s suggestion that Jerrusalem’s Wailing Wall could be adapted for the present day. At the Wailing Wall, visitors leave prayers and messages in the wall’s crevices. At Brighton’s Waiting Wall, meanwhile, anyone can post their confessions online at thewaitingwall.com, and they are then displayed on the screen and online. As of today, over 5,000 messages have been submitted.
On the twitter feed of their digital storytelling collective, Free the Trees, Donohoe and Parker have claimed that the messages are anonymous in order to encourage people to speak up:
If you aren’t passing through Brighton train station this week you can view the wall’s messages here. Below are a selection of those which have appeared so far:
Cheerful stuff.
