Encounters: Echoes of War

ENCOUNTERS – Echoes of War honours the memory of Canadian veterans and their loved ones by transforming testimony into presence.

This immersive audio installation challenges the way we experience history, presenting it not as a fixed narrative, but as an emotional geography we enter and navigate. Voices emerge from silence, find the listener, and walk alongside them, sometimes close, sometimes drifting, always personal. Each interaction is singular, shaped by the visitor’s movement in space.

A unique scenography of ultrasonic sound technology and intentional light design creates encounters that feel deeply intimate and human. A veteran’s voice seems to emerge from the air beside you, as if speaking only to you, in a space free from visual distraction.

In this field of shifting voices, the murmur of loss, resilience, and memory fill the air and unfold as fragments of lived experience and moments of raw vulnerability that persist in the minds and bodies of those who lived them and those who remember them. The only way to learn about them is to accompany and listen.

By walking with these voices, we engage in a subtle yet powerful act of remembrance. And in doing so, we carry the echo forward.

ENCOUNTERS – Echoes of War is presented at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa from October 1st to November 30th, 2025. For exhibition hours, admission fees and more, please visit the museum’s webpage here.

This installation was created using interviews conducted as part of the Canadian War Museum’s oral history project In Their Own Voices.