Hz : A Speculation Into The Future Of Sounds
Hz is an interactive sonic art installation that explores how people connect with nature in the city today and beyond through a sensorial experience. The work suggests the sounds of a city and how they evolve with humans and machines in this age of the Anthropocene, presenting them with sculptures of mediated nature. With human’s dominant force on the environment, they have great influence over the mix of sounds heard today. As agents of change in such a geological age, human activities have impact and humans find themselves caught in nature’s web.
Urban living has resulted in an overpopulation of sounds. The sounds of the natural world end up mixing and competing with the sounds of the built environment, composing a soundscape that gets louder and more confusing. Nature sounds are more often than not overpowered and masked by sounds of the city.
The carelessness of the modern Man is also leading to more and more species becoming extinct. Hz addresses issues of preservation and archiving by capturing what is fleeting and nearly extinct. The work explores permanence, presence, and re-presence of these sounds.
With uncertain future of sounds, Hz seeks to understand and rationalize the coexistence of Man and nature. Hz explores how Biophony, the sounds of the natural environment, is affected by Anthrophony; as they become more and more unnatural.
Hz presents to the audience the feedback loops of a new ecosystem that now include humans and machines. The main soundscape in the space is created with feedback sounds processed to mimic nature’s sounds in a forest. It evolves with time as the audiences walk and interact with the work, creating layers upon layers of sound, getting louder and the layers less distinguishable. Hz showcases this amalgamation of sounds.
Supporting Hz are a series of documentation and a collection of “urban sounds”.
Thoughts
What is natural? Being so familiar with the aural ecology of the city, is this really so strange?
The Anthropocene will only bring people further away from the original design. In this confusing transitional period, city dwellers have to come to terms and respond to this evolving soundscape.
The future of sounds is one that is uncertain. Sounds are fleeting.They can be here one moment, and gone the next. And in some cases, gone forever.
To the dead corals in the Oceans,
To the extinct animals on our planet,
To the voids here on Earth,
What does extinction sound like?
Or will the future become really silent?
Noiseless?
Alternatively, can the future become artificially mixed?
The world tuned to have no redundancy, no excess; take the good and throw out the bad.
The world tuned to have no redundancy, no excess; take the good and throw out the bad.
The experience, understanding, and perception of Nature constantly rewritten and redefined by our progressing world
The Question of Authenticity :
Disclaimer!
The original work was intended to be a physical installation featured in Nanyang Technological University's School of Art, Design, and Media's Graduation Show 2020 at Gillman Barracks, Singapore. Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, it has been postponed and installation cannot be actualized. The work featured here is a virtual simulation and rendering of the space done in Unreal Engine.
To experience the virtual museum, do contact me at sherylgszn@gmail.com
