We usually move around with a small van, as we take in great seriousness our ecological footprint. The commercial company in the Interpretation world moves around with big truck full of very expensive equipment, at no reach for small organizations and collectives of the social movement area.
When it comes to the sound proofing of the booths, of course they don’t offer the same characteristics as the full-on soundproofed booths normally used in the Interpretation world, for which you need to move a truck in order to transport them – increasing incredibly not only the ecological footprint, but also the overall costs.
We consider enough to use those Plexicabins – as we call them – more environmentally friendly in comparison to the sound-proofed booths. Of course there’s need to organize the room in a way that the voice of the interpreters doesn’t reach too much the ears of the close-by participants – which are using headphones to receive the Interpretation in the language they choose, by the way.
The Booths1 that we use – the Plexicabins – were designed more than a decade ago by a pioneer collective project that I co-founded in 2009. Their designs are open-source and they were copied and adapted by dozens of other collectives and organizations all over the world.
They are made of a foldable plexiglass structure with a wooden top and are lightweight and environmentally friendly, as we can move them around with ANTS small van together with the rest of the equipment, without the need of a big truck or dedicated set-up team. The plexiglass structure offers a decent soundproofing, while the wooden top ensures cabins stability as it keeps the cabin together.
Come to an ANTS event to see them in action!
If instead you’re interested in building some for your group or organization, don’t hesitate to contact us!
- Technical expression from the Interpreting world. It means the physical space where the Interpreters sits. In a commercial Interpretation set-up, the Interpreters are completely isolated from the rest of the room, sometimes even in another room. They are completely cut-off visually from the rest of the participants, thus eliminating their presence from the event itself. We think that the Interpreters are n important part of the event itself, and should be more visible, as we think they are part of the movement. Those big booths, with a door to enter it, completely soundproof, are also very expensive and bulky, thus requiring even more fund to build and therefore hire them, but most importantly, to transport them. A dedicated team of technicians must be called for the set-up in every venue and they must be transported by big trucks, moving the technicians with another vehicle, like a van with many seats. We like to be lightweight and environmentally friendly, so we use another type of booths, “Plexicabins”, see above, on the article itself. By the way, we don’t use the word “booth”, but instead we call them with a friendly “cabins” 🙂 ↩︎
