Slow Story Slide Show is a specially created experience for ten people at a time 'on light'. Participants are invited to use headphones to listen to a meditation or story, written by Sheila, whilst viewing a series of slides through desktop slide-viewers - each slide an image carefully selected from the Wellcome Collection. The piece draws connections between Science and Art, intertwining them into a participatory, yet focussed, meditative story, carefully installed on a table top.

What happens in the work?

In the piece 10 participants at a time use headphones to listen to a pre-recorded meditation, or story, 'on light' whilst viewing a series of 6 slides through desktop slide-viewers. 

The slides - handled and placed in the viewer by each participant - allow the meditation/story to unfold frame by frame at a considered pace. The audio includes a soundscape and clearly prompts participants as to when each slide should be changed. Each slide is also clearly marked so it is easy to know which goes next. 

The content of the meditation/story, and also the slides themselves (selected from Wellcome’s Picture Library) open and end with the following quote by Astrophysicist, Jocelyn Bell Burnell: “Nothing is static, nothing is final, everything is held provisionally”. This idea underpins the piece in terms of its content - from the telling of how one discovery leads on to another to the action of changing the slides themselves.

The meditation / story is 15 mins in length - long enough for a thought to unfold but not too long for a persons thoughts to wander. 

With Sound Design by: Lucy Cash

commissioned by Wellcome Collection for ‘On Light’ (1-4 May 2015), a collaboration between Wellcome Collection and UCL. 

Photography by Lucy Cash and Wellcome Collection