At its best, a dialogue between people develops into a conversation, where the participants share their thoughts in order to achieve a common understanding. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, there is always polyphony in a Dostoievskyan dialogue. The voice in itself always includes the voice of the other. Polyphony is more concerned with the interpenetration of sounds than with fixed points, it is rather multiple than singular.

At the heart of Saarto's sculptures lies the alphabet, where a letter is perceived as a sign. This sign represents one voice and the point where communication begins. However, the combinations of letters she uses do not suggest any words, in the same manner as one often plays with letters on a register plate, adding vowels in between the consonants. At least they do not seem to refer to Finnish words. This aspect could also be interpreted as polyphony. Each sculpture has at least as many voices as there are letters and, accordingly, as many possibilities as there are voices. Also the surface of the sculptures implies communication. One of the sculptures is covered in paint originally meant for blackboards used in schools, thereby creating a surface suggesting endless correspondence, the other sculpture is painted with chalk.(...)"

Paula Toppila

This text is an edited extract from Alphabets and Tools - Introduction to the project by Paula Toppila published in Alphabets and Tools exhibition catalogue by FRAME Finnish Fund for Art Exchange, 1999.