Flowing Sound

Project Members

Yaohan Zhang

Yujing Ma

Marcel Zaes Sagesser

Sihui Li

Zhaorui Liu

Ziye Chen

Shuhan Ma

MY ROLE

Hardware Development

Website Development

TOOLS

TouchDesigner

Blender

SURPPOTED BY

Sound Studies Group

“Flowing Sound” takes as its starting point the idea that much of the sound in Shenzhen is dynamic and is “flowing,” that is, it is emitted from portable, moving technological sources that span a provisional sonic network across the city, thereby connecting “low tech” and “high tech” purposes and neighborhoods with one another. What emerges is an “aural economy” (Molina 2020) in which technological sound and media sources can teach us something about Shenzhen-Pingshan. The artwork is based on intense fieldwork to collect, record, and track moving media and sounds in the city. The project team then categorizes the found media and is in the process of developing and establishing a dynamic “working dictionary” of moving media and sound sources of Shenzhen. Collected sound sources are brought back into the street on a provisiaonal cart, enabling conversations with the community around sonic ephemera in the city. The results of both the dictionary and the street performance are exhibited as mobile installation with LED screens and low-fi loudspeaker devices in a gallery. “Flowing Sound” combines sound, video, performance, community-participation, background research, fieldwork, computational data analysis and visualization, and a digital archive building into a multimodal artwork and a body of artistic research.

Workshop

This workshop provides all participants with a wonderful adventure to experience the streets of Pingshan! We invite participants to participate in the creation of art projects together with the workshop directors. Firstly, we collect the "flowing sound" on the streets of Pingshan together. The participants received support from technical equipment such as microphones, recorders and headphones. These devices assist participants in completing this street fieldwork. Returning to the workshop, we gather materials together and assemble them on-site to create a "flowing sound notebook" together. We provide participants with interesting city symbol stickers and other DIY tools. This workshop can bring participants a new sound experience.

Exhibition

Flowing Sound | Pingshan captures portable media devices from densely populated urban streets in Pingshan and other areas of Shenzhen, such as battery powered speakers and LED text signs used by street vendors. The work showcases a vibrant and complex urban soundscape, revealing the deep connections between these sounds and economic, spatial dynamics, and community interactions.

The sound and visual symbols collected on the streets are archived in the form of a 'media dictionary'. These media fragments are reorganized through digital technology and integrated with raw materials from the streets into multimedia devices, creating the possibility of further interaction. Artists bring it back to the streets to perform and interact with the local community. The entire process of performance and interaction is recorded as part of the installation and brought back to the space of the art museum as part of this exhibition. This work aims to use creative methods to allow the audience to explore the fragmentation and transience of cities from a new perspective, some experiences that have been overlooked under the rapid pace of life and technological development.

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