This installation took inspiration from composer Steve Reich’s work entitled ‘Proverb’ (1995) - a musical composition for voices and ensemble for a duration of 14 minutes. The whole piece has a repetitive ‘speech melody’ of the text “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!”.

The short text, written in 1946, originally  comes from a collection of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writings titled Culture and Value. In the same paragraph from which it was taken, Wittgenstein further notes, “If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far”.

I was fascinated by the proverbial paradox from Wittgenstein’s text and the echoic effect from Steve Reich’s musical piece. It leads to this reflective composition where audiences’ interaction also plays a part in echoing the proverb. A take on the contrasting elements of ‘small’-ness of a ‘thought’ to the ‘whole’-ness of ‘life’. 

The text is hand-crafted (acid-treated) and made see-through. The word ‘thought’ here is put in parentheses, placed next to a line of dots so that the audience can fill in their own terms.