My sound collection started in the summer of 2014, when for the first time I realized that the development of my hometown, Shanghai, seemed to be washing out the local culture by internationalization. Since then, I have been recording fragments of my life.
Hearing the sounds that recall memories of specific locations and times, I have come to realize that the recordings are not only the evidence of my presence, but they also suggest how lives could be lived in other ways.
I have also used my personal recordings for sound design in three theatre shows: http://www.linyuaner.com/design.html
Hearing the sounds that recall memories of specific locations and times, I have come to realize that the recordings are not only the evidence of my presence, but they also suggest how lives could be lived in other ways.
I have also used my personal recordings for sound design in three theatre shows: http://www.linyuaner.com/design.html
My Life × Their Lives
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This is my first sound piece. I collaged sound recordings which paralleled and collapsed into each other. By putting on headphones, viewers resurrected other people's lives. The charts on the wall are lists of the time and locations at which the sound happened. I also invited viewers to write down what they heard on a wall and make an improvisational sculpture with the random objects that I collected.
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Each of the headsets in the installation was playing one the following sound compositions that I made:
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Experiment 1
2’14’’ |
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Experiment 4
44’’ |
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Experiment 5
6’37’’ |
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Experiment 6
1’48’’ |
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Experiment 7
2’50’’ |
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Experiment 8
30’33’’ |
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Experiment 9
3’08’’ |
Other pieces in the "Experiments" series include:
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Experiment 3
44’’ |
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Experiment 10
2'10’’ |
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Experiment 11
47’’ |
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Experiment 14
55’’ |
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Experiment 15
1'32’’ |
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Experiment 16
2'25’’ |
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Experiment 17
2'25’’ |
Sonatina
2017
2017
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I. Scraping Ink
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II. Tapping Rock
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III. Scratching Clay
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For "II. Tapping Rock", I received a gift from a friend on a Friday afternoon - a piece of the wall that peeled from the staircase to the printshop. So I thought oh I should make prints with it. The rock broke down into smaller pieces as I tapped.
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Below is the screen shot for "II. Tapping Rock":
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Below is the screenshot of the assembly process for "III. Scratching Clay". I chopped up my recording into smaller bits, each being a gesture of scratching. And I arranged them by length.
Conversation, or "How to Play with Your Sculpture"
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Entrance
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The Voice
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In this piece, I used artificial voices from Google Translate to read out my own thoughts. They are all related to my experiences with sound. By distorting the voice, I exposed thoughts that I would usually feel too shy and afraid to tell.
The volume of the piece is set at a whispery level so that the viewer will have to bend over in order to hear sound. |
The sentences used in the audio are as follows:
1. Sound is an invisible sculpture that binds all creatures together.
2. Building up sounds into a conglomerate of chaos is like adding colors onto the canvas until it’s black.
3. Building up sounds is also like when one part of a picture gets zoomed out more and more.
4. But building up high-pitched sounds is like flashing laser beams in front of your eyes. They are so intense that everything is white.
5. I get a headache from hearing continuous high pitches.
6. After turning off the lights, I heard something from the door. It was high-pitched. But when I concentrated again, I realized it was my own breath, air coming through the nostrils, just like whistling.
7. When crawling on the floor, I heard the sound of my breath, amplified, as if it’s coming from the earth down below.
8. Doing sound for this show has haunted me for several weeks. I can’t help thinking about clicking on the wrong buttons. The sense of guilt recurs within my body, and in my dreams.
9. When bells are slowed down, they sound lonely and all of a sudden serious.
10. When the human voice is rendered low, it sounds like breathing under the ocean.
11. Unwanted sounds always stand out. They are harsh and loud. And you can’t help thinking about them. It’s like you would always hear your neighbor even if you’re wearing earplugs.
12. When the shower water came down, a song from 8 years ago suddenly came to my mind. I used to stay up late at night, working while listening to music.
13. When I was singing, I felt the air flow gushing out of the mouth in all directions, bumping into the lips, and the flesh in the oral cavity.
1. Sound is an invisible sculpture that binds all creatures together.
2. Building up sounds into a conglomerate of chaos is like adding colors onto the canvas until it’s black.
3. Building up sounds is also like when one part of a picture gets zoomed out more and more.
4. But building up high-pitched sounds is like flashing laser beams in front of your eyes. They are so intense that everything is white.
5. I get a headache from hearing continuous high pitches.
6. After turning off the lights, I heard something from the door. It was high-pitched. But when I concentrated again, I realized it was my own breath, air coming through the nostrils, just like whistling.
7. When crawling on the floor, I heard the sound of my breath, amplified, as if it’s coming from the earth down below.
8. Doing sound for this show has haunted me for several weeks. I can’t help thinking about clicking on the wrong buttons. The sense of guilt recurs within my body, and in my dreams.
9. When bells are slowed down, they sound lonely and all of a sudden serious.
10. When the human voice is rendered low, it sounds like breathing under the ocean.
11. Unwanted sounds always stand out. They are harsh and loud. And you can’t help thinking about them. It’s like you would always hear your neighbor even if you’re wearing earplugs.
12. When the shower water came down, a song from 8 years ago suddenly came to my mind. I used to stay up late at night, working while listening to music.
13. When I was singing, I felt the air flow gushing out of the mouth in all directions, bumping into the lips, and the flesh in the oral cavity.
Labor
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Viewers kneel down to hear the sound of me sanding, chiseling, and painting the sculpture through a tube inside a wooden megaphone structure. By using such sounds, I am paying homage to the similarly tedious labor that was put into the construction of the dome of the Florence Cathedral, from which I derived the form of my piece.
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I started with a model for a human-sized telescope that was supposed to be installed outdoors. Ideally, each time you rotate the telescope, you see a different "crop" image formed by the floral patterns. I used multiples of 1/5 of the diameter of a circle to draw arcs that form floral patterns of rotational symmetry, referring to the “pointed fifth” that determined the profile of the dome of the Florence Cathedral. |
Liminal 1'22"
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Constantly switching lives between China and the U.S., I became aware of the simultaneous quality of things that happen around the world. The idea of simultaneity inspired me to do this split-screen piece, where I put my dual life on either side of one screen.
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Sometimes the two sides sync as the center line gets less recognizable, and the next moment they grow into utterly different images. This occasional shift between assimilation and distinction is a symbol of my experience as an unsettled traveler.
In the Dickinson thesis exhibition, the video was projected into a suitcase.
Sleigh Talk
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During my residency in Pedvāle, Latvia, I found an abandoned sleigh in a barn, fixed it, sat in it, read in it, talked with myself and made a video.
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Script:
K: I had a dream last night. It was my grandpa’s place. My dad was there. He was very careful. But the room was old.
G: So you saw something from 60 years ago.
K: Yeah.
Pause.
K: Where are we going?
G: To the other side.
K: Where are the horses?
G: They are dead.
K: Then how are we gonna get going?
G: By ourselves.
K: How?
G: You’ll see.
Pause.
K: What’s in there?
G: Raindrops.
K: Raindrops. How does it taste?
G: Raindrops.
Pause.
K: What are you sending?
G: Wishes.
K: Wishes. Where to?
G: To the bottom of the ocean.
Pause.
K: What time is it?
K: I had a dream last night. It was my grandpa’s place. My dad was there. He was very careful. But the room was old.
G: So you saw something from 60 years ago.
K: Yeah.
Pause.
K: Where are we going?
G: To the other side.
K: Where are the horses?
G: They are dead.
K: Then how are we gonna get going?
G: By ourselves.
K: How?
G: You’ll see.
Pause.
K: What’s in there?
G: Raindrops.
K: Raindrops. How does it taste?
G: Raindrops.
Pause.
K: What are you sending?
G: Wishes.
K: Wishes. Where to?
G: To the bottom of the ocean.
Pause.
K: What time is it?
Not That 2'32"
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In the process of creating this video, I realized that I didn't want anybody to know what was the raw material, as well as what was going on within myself in this period of my life. So after layers and layers of effects, what was left for the audience (if there is one) to experience became abstract shapes moving in grayscale and heavily distorted sound recordings.
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An attempt to explain the process:
1. I built geometric forms out of cereal boxes and put random shit from my studio inside the objects.
2. I wrote down my thoughts on the objects that I just made.
3. I videotaped myself playing with the objects and saying the words that I wrote on the objects.
4. I built a video with the footage, as well as past recordings including construction machinery in Boston, bus announcements in Shanghai dialect, people shutting door in front of my studio, etc.
5. I built a scroll based on the timeline in Adobe Premiere.
6. I cut out the video blocks and added drawings and text in the audio blocks. The drawings and text are what I think respond to the audio.
7. I showed the video and the scroll in a critique and didn't tell anything about this process and people got mad at me.
1. I built geometric forms out of cereal boxes and put random shit from my studio inside the objects.
2. I wrote down my thoughts on the objects that I just made.
3. I videotaped myself playing with the objects and saying the words that I wrote on the objects.
4. I built a video with the footage, as well as past recordings including construction machinery in Boston, bus announcements in Shanghai dialect, people shutting door in front of my studio, etc.
5. I built a scroll based on the timeline in Adobe Premiere.
6. I cut out the video blocks and added drawings and text in the audio blocks. The drawings and text are what I think respond to the audio.
7. I showed the video and the scroll in a critique and didn't tell anything about this process and people got mad at me.
The Hand Series
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I sat through a friend’s piano practice session one day and drew her moving hands at various moments of the piece. With the imagery of hands stacked up, I created videos based on my past recordings. The videos are projected onto the walls, the ceiling, and the floor so that viewers are immersed in a fusion of aural and visual elements.
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Sources of sound in this series include: -Crowd walking in a subway station in Shanghai -Rope pulling ship in a harbor in Chicago -Evening bells in my neighborhood in Shanghai -Me painting Mathers Theater floor with a roller -Chopin Ballade No. 3 played by Haoruo Zhang |
Diving 1'06"
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Breathing 22"
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Shutting 58"
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Rolling 1'00“
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Pushing 44"
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The Rhythm series
2016
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Rhythm I
48" I paired sound clips with photos that I took. All of the photos here are what I think the "textures" of the sound.
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Rhythm II
39" The moving image in this piece is generated by the sound composition that I made.
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Animation
Laudamus te from voice class
0'17"
2022
In my voice class at BU, my teacher would shout a bunch of random metaphors to help me produce a better sound.
I've Been Here
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Everyday
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