Making Of… “Soundscape In A Minor”

As loyal followers might know, for a couple of months now we have been enjoying our sweet-natured and above all very talented sound designer on our team, David Keohane. Having majored in Music Technology in the University of Limerick/Ireland and being proficient in 5 instruments, he is giving the Liu Dao artworks the perfect tune. Having amorous connections with traditional Chinese instruments such as the Gu Zheng, David’s involvement has led to some very refreshing aspects in Liu Dao’s art making. His sound conception is an enrichment of the creation by every means. To illustrate curious readers what the procedure for that kind of production is, here comes the „making of“ story of our newest sound installation, „Soundscape In A Minor“.

All started with a brainstorming afternoon in the frame of the preparation of „Metropolis Rises“, our current exhibition in Beijing. Having concentrated on issues about urban development and city life concepts recently, among others for our shows „Urban Operandi“ in Hong Kong and „Body-City-Mechanism“ in Shanghai, the idea was to find a way to transfer city sound to a piece of art. David went out and recorded „the real world“, sounds of our everyday lives in urban areas, the hubbub of honking cars, creaky wheels and sirens of emergency vehicles. Back in office, with a techy geek mix of software such as Logic, C-Sound and Audicity, he manipulated the sounds with the so-called “granular synthesis”. In other words, he transformed the individual tones by chopping tiny parts out of it, and finally stretched those into a new dimension of acoustic pattern. Furthermore, he tuned the final sound parts – 7 in total – into A minor, just as you do with an instrument. This means the Machine Hum sound frame is tuned in A low minor, following by the car horn in the tunnel (C), the tram bell (E), the siren (A), a bike bell (C), the train whistle (E), and finally ending the arpeggio with an A again, the street alarm.

You got it? Great, huh?

The result is a defamiliarization of what we are so accustomed to perceive in order to provoke reflective thoughts on it. Playing the chimes altogether creates an unknown but strangely familiar acoustic ambiance, but individually activated we start to detect the amazing wealth of sound nuances at any pitch. That’s city life! But that`s not yet the end.

As Liu Dao likes tinkering with its visitors, we have been deliberating upon an interactive way of presenting the installation to the public, aiming to show the ravishing purity of the pulsating city from … YOUR point of view. Shortly after, some LDR sensors, an 8-bit microcontroller and 7 nixie tubes have arrived at the island6 Arts Center in order to complete the new artwork. The 8-bit microcontroller is an interactive electronic object that David programmed to react on light. Whenever you shine a flashlight on one of the sensors, you hear one of the tones outlined above. Light affects the sound, yes. The nixie tubes control the volume level: the stronger the light, the louder the sound. But not only the volume changes, also different effects like fading in or out affect the final sound impression, making it sound “musical”. Having control over the tones should not only give an opportunity of reflection but also to learn to deal with our daily existence, to consider the acoustic level we are exposed to in “different lights”. And this is how a torch becomes a conductor’s baton, and your guidance of it, your very own spherical city sound creation: “Soundscape In A Minor”.

Text & Photos: Melani Murkovic

Soundscape In A Minor A小调

“Sound is more democratic than sight, which panders to the affluent with their verdant plantings and heightened views. But, rich and poor, we all experience the velvety swoosh of traffic in the rain, the drone of leaf blowers, the shake of that loose manhole covering, the growl of predatory trucks and the jaw-clenching cacophony of jackhammers in the morning. For in our boundary-less urban acoustic existence, other people’s dense and inscrutable lives float unbidden in and out of our heads, becoming part of our urban soundscape. In Soundscape in A Minor, Liu Dao asks you to reevaluate the effects of these noises on our life as we start to learn how to manage and organize, instead of simply reduce or drown-out. We become the composers of our own modern soundscape, waving our flashlight like a composers baton, choosing what to hear and for how long before moving to another urban instrument entirely. Some of us dance to the music; some cringe until its over. But like it or not, we all live within a complex aural Metropolis where we must consider quality of noise rather than their quantity in decibels.”

Text: Margaret Johnson