Jacob's Ladder: An Advent Calendar in Sound

My friend Sunil is about to launch Jacob’s Ladder: An Advent Calendar in Sound. It’s a sound installation project that he’s setting up at Holy Trinity Beckenham, our home church, in London SE20. And for those of you who can’t make the trip to HTBeck (as I call it), there will be opportunity to follow the calendar online.

Here’s the blurb from the blog:

Advent is the beginning of the Christian year. This beginning starts with a period of waiting. It starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. An Advent calendar marks this period of waiting but normally starts from December 1st up to the 24th or 25th.

Advent calendars have little windows which open each day and what is inside depends on where it has come from. Some reveal the traditional Christmas story while others reveal a chocolate or a sweet or some small gift.

The Advent calendar in sound is a speaker installation that ‘grows’ from 1 to 25 speakers and reveals a new sound each day. These sounds have to do with our ordinary everyday waiting, whether it’s at a shopping checkout or waiting for the kettle to boil. The ‘ordinariness’ tries to capture Christ’s own descent into our ordinary everyday lives.

Jacob’s Ladder is a powerful image of heaven and earth touching each other. Jesus uses the same image to describe himself. So the ladder attempts to connect the wholly other, with wholly here, reflecting Christ’s own destroying of barriers that keep us apart from each other and creation.