In my sound work, I have combined the topic of my dissertation, which is the relationship between nature and sound.

My sound work can be divided into four parts, the first part is when nature was not yet destroyed, and the second part is when nature was destroyed due to the outbreak of war, industry, and technology with the advent of the industrial age. The third part is when mankind is involved in cutting down or destroying the natural environment. The fourth part is when mankind has done this damage and nature has taken its revenge so that environmental and natural measures are taken.

In the first part, I used some harmonious synthesizer sounds, representing the most pristine untouched sounds of the natural world. In the second and third sections, I added some sound effects, such as the sound of some bombs and artillery. This represents the world going to war as the human industry grows more and more ambitious. In addition to some of the perceived sounds, I also recorded some thunder, which can represent the beginning of climate change in the natural world, representing the occurrence of some natural disasters. In the last part, the music turns back into harmonious synthesizer sounds. This represents mankind starting to value the harmony in nature and to make up for the mistakes they have made, by using technology to develop products that are better for the environment rather than mass warfare. And it is partly a vision of a better future for mankind.

Cathy Lane is an artist, composer and academic. She works primarily in sound, combining oral history, archival recordings, spoken word and environmental recordings to investigate histories, environments, our collective and individual memories and the forces that shape them. She is inspired by places or themes which are rooted in every day experience and particularly interested in ‘hidden histories and historical amnesia and how this can be investigated from a feminist perspective through the medium of composed sound.  

I listened to her work Hidden lives, in which I could hear a lot of voice repetition around the left and right channels. This left me with a feeling of overwhelm and a gradual reduction of the lower frequencies of the sound. In the synopsis, Cathy Lane’s inspiration for this piece was the repetition of domestic tasks performed by women around the house, and I think the repetitive musical sounds may have come from the command of the male gaze. In different times women have been the ones who have taken on this invisible work in the home. They are confined to the house and don’t spend too much time outside or away from this confined life.

After listening to this piece, I was very moved by it. Because in our family too it is my mother who does the various chores, and we some times take for granted that we will leave this matter of housework to the women in the family. We men sometimes don’t even do the housework, or even complain about the women in the family because of some work pressure or other pressures, which is also a sign of male gazing. I think we should reflect on this.

AUDREY CHEN is a 2nd generation Chinese/Taiwanese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest aesthetic.

I listened to the piece In The on Audrey’s album and I was amazed at how much she could transform her voice and do so without post-production.The interplay of vocals and cello in Chen’s piece creates a powerful sonic impact. She pushes the vocals to their limits, from a low growl to a whisper-like whisper that becomes part of her work. At the same time, her approach to the cello is unique, utilising a variety of unconventional techniques to explore new sonic expressions from this familiar instrument.

After listening to “In the,” I had the feeling that I had entered an unknown forest, where every sound was like a creature of the forest, some low, some murmuring, some silent, some wild. I was lost in this forest of sound and found a new self in it.

I went to Thin air, a new media art exhibition in London this weekend, which featured an excellent combination of light and sound and showcased the work of contemporary artists from around the world. The exhibition is a large-scale immersive exhibition that makes the element of light infinite.

The works that surprised me the most were those by the artists Kimchi and chips and Dutch artist Rosa Menkman, who used a combination of video projections, mirrors, and speakers to produce moving cross-beams of light and reflections to reveal volumetric light, the forms of which are materialised in the form of haze on the work.

After seeing the exhibition, I searched for other works by Kimchi and chips. On their website, I saw the work Halo, a bespoke installation in front of Somerset House in London, transforming sunlight into a visible and invisible form. The work consists of over 100 motorized mirrors arranged in a 15-metre track that changes direction as the sun moves, concentrating the sun’s rays in one place and using water mist as a medium to draw a large halo in mid-air. The artist created a mathematical model and developed a virtual simulation for each mirror. In order to achieve a clear halo of light, each mirror was set with a set of parameters to ensure its unique position, steering, axis offset, and polynomial correction parameters. Technology is used to create the infinite possibilities of art.

After listening to Annea Lockwood’s ‘Piano Transplants’, I was deeply impressed by her unique approach and the concepts she presented.

First and foremost, Piano Transplants is a challenge and a critique of traditional musical concepts, with Lockwood’s use of discarded pianos as the main object of the work, burning and drowning in extreme ways, shattering my perception of the piano as an instrument. This is no longer the kind of musical composition that we know as an expression of emotion and skill through an instrument but more of a revolution against musical tradition.

The sound of the burning piano, the blistering sound of the submerged piano, and even the visual impact of the acts themselves all become part of this musical work. This makes ‘Piano Transplants’ transcend the boundaries of music and become a multifaceted expression of sound art, visual art, and performance art.

The combination of sound art with visual art can also be seen in Susan Philipsz’s visual art Turner Prize for her work ‘Lowland,’ a Scottish ballad (a lament about a drowning sailor saying goodbye to his lover in his dreams) that she hummed and played on a loudspeaker under the ‘suicide mecca’ under the George V Bridge in Glasgow. The artist’s intention is to transform this bleak public space with a private voice, encouraging the listener to reconsider the meaning of life. The bridge is here like a passage between life and death, a river that you cross to enter the world of the dead. The echoes coming from the bottom of the river are also like a chorus of the deceased. This sound art can also be called visual art.

https://issueprojectroom.org/video/annea-lockwood-piano-transplants-piano-burning-piano-garden-piano-drowning

I went to see Mike Nelson’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, his immersive show where he collects materials and objects from recycling depots, car factories, charity shops, and other places, transforming and reconstructing them. Referencing science fiction, failed political movements, dark history, and counter-culture, he touches on alternative ways of living and thinking: lost belief systems disrupted histories and cultures.

negative comment; rather, I feel uncertain when I step into each of the galleries and feel uneasy. This may have been due to my fear of being in a dimension of time that is unfamiliar to us.

One of my more impressive works is The Deliverance and The Patience. It is a vast interior space that is divided into many different rooms with different scenes, all of which are rather neglected and can be seen as traces of time.

I was most excited about a sand-filled space called The Bluff Canyon. First exhibited in Oxford in 2004, this work can be seen as a tribute to Robert Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed. When I first saw the installation, I thought of a film: Dune. There is a scene in it where modern concrete and desert come together.