Interactive Sound Installation Sound Message Board, 2008
Commissioned and Exhibited by V&A Museum
Graphic Design: Shi Yuan

Concept
"Reduced listening: focuses on sound itself independent of cause and meaning."
– Michel Chion

In daily life, we are used to listening to sound as a vehicle for perception. The traits of sound, the texture of resonance and the pure sonic properties have been commonly neglected. This interactive sound installation is intended to encourage people's reduced listening∗: focus people's attention on sound, make it the subject, and remind people of the beauty of acoustics.

To accomplish such an objective, the tangram∗, a traditional Chinese dissection puzzle, is chosen for the visual, to provide ‘random’ consequences of the audience’s actions.

"Take a newspaper. Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next, carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently. Take out each cutting one after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag. An infinitely original Dadaist poem is resembled."
- Tristan Tzara

The tangram is programmed to be driven by the audio in a random fashion, thus forms unpredictable graphs when the audio eases. The infinite possibility of the pictures tangram forms has no internal connections to the audience’s behaviour which cause it. They are merely geometrical shapes. The lack of ‘meaningful’ visual explanations, forces the audience to seek the meaning of the act of their writing sonically.

Hence, the audience’s common listening habit is deconstructed to focus on the sound itself.

Design

Audiences are invited to write on the ‘sound message board’. As the audience writes on the board, the vibration of the action is captured by contact microphones attached to the board. The captured sonic data will go through audio processing devices manipulated by the sound artist in real time, and broadcast back to the participants. Simultaneously, the captured audio data is also sent to a visual programme which drives each tangram component to move and construct in an unpredictable fashion.

Multiple individuals create a symphony of sound by starting and pausing at different times with varied writing strength and speed. The writing instrument provided contains no ink. The absence of logical visual consequences directs the audience to focus their attention on the sonic experience.

Special Thanks to: Xu Susu, Tian Yuan, Simon O'Donnell, Chris Carter, Pan Wenxuan, Li Cheng, Xu Luming and Edward Steed.