Sound

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 as a traveler and flâneur.

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 theatre shows, please refer to the following page on my website:
http://www.linyuaner.com/design.html

Sonatina
2017

I. Scraping Ink

II. Tapping Rock

III. Scratching Clay

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.

Below is the screen shot for "II. Tapping Rock":

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"
2016 - 2017

An autodidactic video about the piece, or a mocumentary

Entrance
2016 - 2017

An autodidactic video about the piece, or a mocumentary

The Voice
2016

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.

Labor
2016

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.

My Life × Their Lives
2015

This piece features collaged sounds from around the world which parallel and collapse into each other. By putting on headphones, viewers are resurrecting other people's lives. I also invited the viewers to write down what they heard and make an improvisational sculpture with the random objects that I collected.