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INTERVIEW 1 March 26, 2008 Club 71, Hong Kong
Dug Winningham is creative sound director of New York-based soundwalk. He was in Hong Kong in 2008 as sound designer for Chanel Mobile Art.
D - Dug Winningham
Y - Yeung Yang
1. about soundwalks
Y: Maybe we can start with why you are here, what you have been doing?
D: My name is Dug Winningham and I am a sound designer for a company called Soundwalk, based in New York City. For the past six years, we have been doing audio walking tours in New York City, in about 20 different neighborhoods now. We are now doing this worldwide. We have five neighborhoods in Paris, one in Berlin, one in London, and we even have a beautiful boat ride, in Varanasi, India. And so we are here in Hong Kong because we are doing soundwalks in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai.
The company started out doing soundwalks in New York neighborhoods. We all have art backgrounds. Stephan Crasneanscki, the founder of Soundwalk has a photography degree from Parsons in New York. I have a conceptual art degree from San Francisco. So yes we are all kind of artistic by nature. So we started this hoping we could make some money out of this. (laughs)
What happens is when we’re doing these soundwalks, we get critical acclaim, I guess. A lot of magazines have written about us. Some schools have actually used our soundwalks for curriculum in media courses. That’s really exciting for us. So we started approaching the big companies like Adidas, Puma, Nike, to pitch them the idea that we are a street-critical media. Our first corporate project was with Adidas, where we did a soundwalk in The Bronx.
Y: When was that?
D: About five years ago. We did three walks in The Bronx. There was the birthplace of Hip Hop, the origin of Graffiti, and the history of Yankee Stadium. And you are actually, the users are actually walking through neighborhoods where Afrika Bambaataa, Jazzy Jay, and the Tats Cru were born and raised. We walk through places where there’s all this graffiti, almost like an outdoor museum, with graffiti artists talking about their works in different locations, or walking around Yankee Stadium with all the players and people who work there, even the guy who plays the organ, the whole experience. And that’s become very successful for us. On the one side, we are trying to make some money on the commercial side, but with that we can do what we really like, which is exploring the neighborhoods.
Y: Can you explain to me what a soundwalk is? Is it very narrative-based?
D: It IS very narrative-based. Basically we want to get away from the idea that you go on a tour with this guide, and he would tell you this building was built in 1955 by so and so, all that historical crap which we don’t really want to know about. When you go to a new city, what you really want to do is to be with a local, an insider, who knows it. And that’s always the best way to show you around. So when we decide to go to a neighborhood, we go there and meet someone and they tell us their life story, everybody we meet. From there we build a route which is interesting, which has nothing to do with history. We might talk about some historical stuff, but we really want to talk about what’s happening right now. And we are not interested in just looking at buildings. We want people to open doors, to climb staircases, to get on the roofs, in and through alleyways. In some walks we even give you the code to go into some buildings so you walk inside places. Another thing we do is we offer cinematic experiences. You are entering a world we have written. Some of it might not even be true. But while you are doing the experiences they seem very real to you.
Right now, in Hong Kong, we are really pushing this concept. In Hong Kong we walk with the actress Shu Qi. We walk with her for an hour. The story is that she met her man ten years ago, and now she’s walking through the streets and she sees things that remind her of him. So it’s kind of like a love story, and it’s very cinematic. The idea is that you don’t have a movie screen, that the whole city becomes a movie screen and you interact with this history directly. When it works, it works very well. One example is we walk past here (Club 71), in the daytime, the old men are playing different card games. When we sit down with them, you hear about their lives. You slow down. You realize they built all these skyscrapers around you. That’s a work in progress. We’ll see how it goes. But we are excited about this direction.
Y: In this way you are using sound and human voices to tell stories?
D: Yes, we record every city. We try to get music from the neighborhood. Now we are using a composer to compose original music for the entire series. And when it all comes together, you walk for an hour, you feel like you really know the place, and you experience something more than just walking through.
2. listening and designing listening experiences
Y: For you, personally, how did sound come about to be exciting?
D: For me, I have always played music, although not very well. And I was at San Francisco State University, studying conceptual art and information design. They taught us everything - media, video, installation, sculptures etc. I really got into audio, the possibilities of audio. I studied under the multimedia artist Pamela Z. She is an amazing sound artist, using a lot of midi-triggers, triggering different samples while she’s moving. I got really excited about it.
Y: What was it that got you excited?
D: For me it’s…I really enjoy the musicality of my environment. I am interested in hearing sirens coming by, birds singing, the melody of people talking. So to be able to record that, design it, mix it and make it sound like a musical piece, this is really interesting for me. It’s like sampling for a record. You are sampling the city and the environment.
Y: In terms of what goes on every day, how would you describe listening? I mean, listening seems to be a way of understanding that is being pushed aside, because of the way a lot of cities are designed. As a sound designer, or someone naturally sensitive to the musicality of the environment…
D: I would say that everybody is just as selective in what they see and what they choose to see as what you hear. People walk in Central Park in Manhattan and think it’s a very peaceful place. But if you have a microphone, you are recording, it sounds like a major metropolitan city, but you are fooled into believing that it is very peaceful and calm. The reality is that it is chaotic. People choose to hear different things. Because I record a lot, I tend to hear things people are not picking up on. Like all artists, they are seeing things differently than other people would.
In Hong Kong, I didn’t do much of the recording, but my colleague Simone Merli did. You can have a chat with him. He’s a sound artist. He does really interesting stuff on bio feedback, technology, in real time, in the museum setting, where you are looking at visual arts.
Y: What do you think of the soundscape of Hong Kong?
D: Sounds of Hong Kong…everybody is woken up by the sounds of construction. You get used to it. It’s the same sound in Berlin, a city that is constantly rebuilding. So you may not love it but you can appreciate the sound. There is nothing you can do about it. The sound of mah jong tiles being shuffled endlessly…in my building, old folks, who sing karaoke. I like walking through Graham Street with all the different AM radios passing by me as I am walking up the streets. The sound of the children singing, near the Man Mo Temple. There is a school there, and when I walk by, they are playing some kind of xylophone instrument or something. It’s really charming.
Y: My friend told me how she got really irritated with children on her upper floor playing marbles on the floor.
D: I am on the top floor so luckily I don’t have that experience. For me, also being from New York, it’s great how fast you can reach the country from here, to the sea. In New York, you can’t do that. You can drive three hours and you are still in the city.
Y: One thing I realize myself is also as I grow old, I listen more.
D: I can also tell you from a technical point of view, I started getting into sound working for motion pictures. I also sound edit for feature films, so I have a lot of friends in that industry. We are always recording things and trading sounds, like, Do you have the sound of a taxi cab in Mumbai? I just recorded that, and we trade sounds, sometimes we just have fun listening to different things.
I had a west coast sound editor friend visit me, he was walking through New York, and he was laughing. I asked him why, and he said, “I can’t believe how much sound there is in New York.” When we are doing it for a film, you are editing layers and layers of different elements. You have a layer of traffic, a layer of people talking, a layer of horns, a layer of sirens, a layer of birds… a motion picture soundtrack is hundreds and hundreds of sound effects tracks. And you always think when you are editing in the editing room that this is too much. You are recreating it in the editing room, you are in San Francisco trying to recreate the sound of New York. He came to New York and realized he couldn’t possibly recreate so much noise, in the tracks. The same with Hong Kong. Once you start listening to Hong Kong, there are so many things happening at the same time it’s…you are overwhelmed.
What you do in editing is become selective. You refine the experience for a desired effect.
Y: But why is there a desire, maybe, to reconstruct and imitate the real?
D: Well, professionally we just have to. It affects the way you talk to people. You talk more in terms of sound. You have jokes about it, that nobody understands…and also professionally you learn to be very quiet. You don’t realize how much noise you make. I would never wear this nylon jacket if I were actually recording. My shoes, I always wear canvas. Everything you wear has to be quiet. No jewelry or this kind of stuff. The moment you set your microphone down…the great moment for me is when you find a place that sounds good, you set up your microphone, get comfortable, hit record, and then you are listening, and you are really paying attention. When you go back to the studio, the same studio, but listening to different countries, it’s very exciting. The recording becomes a story.. You come back and it’s better than any photograph you have taken of the city. You immediately recall everything and see everything, with just the sound you have recorded. Usually for an ambience I record three minutes minimum, you have things you have to cut out, and other things you have to edit, and you might end up having one minute of sound if you are very detailed about it. If you listen to these long recordings, you are completely transported back to the place. You could probably ask me about the sound of Hong Kong when I get back to New York. I will have a better answer.
It’s just a way of looking at the world. For example, I wish there weren’t any plastic bags, just because it’s ugly sound.
Usually when you are recording, the thing you don’t want to record is the thing that comes alive. A baby suddenly crying in the middle of your recording. You can’t say anything, staying very quiet. I was very angry, but later on that baby becomes the best of part of the recording you did. If you can be open to that…you have no control.
I guess that’s what we do. I’d like to do more on a personal level, play music. I play bass in a rock band in New York.
3. sound art
D: We will be showing an installation in Paris, at the Exit Festival, and that was a really nice piece. Basically we’ve recorded sound for ten years in New York. And every thing we didn’t use for Soundwalk, we put together and made something new. It’s kind of like a journey. I am very proud of it. The curator, Eric Dalbin listened to it, and asked the graffiti artist RoStarr to do a visual representation of what he was hearing. They shot it on video and edited it. Now it’s a multi-media show all in one piece.
Y: What’s the name of the work?
D: It’s called “Kill the Ego.”
Y: Will you do the same thing in Hong Kong?
D: I’d love to. I am really interested in doing that kind of stuff, which is not commercial. But it takes a long time, too.
Y: How long, for this one in Paris?
D: Ten years in New York, so we have a lot of stuff we can choose from. The World Trade Center attack, we have used some stuff there. That was not the main focus of the story, but it’s definitely a very dramatic moment for the story.
Y: Is there a big interest in New York in terms of what you do, Soundwalk, sound art in general? Isn’t there a sound art space called Diasponan?
D: I’ll check it out. There is the Kitchen and it’s been there forever. They do a lot of sound, performance, and video. There are a few dedicated locations for sound art – Engine 27, Roulette, Issue Project Room…
4. sound design for Channel Mobile Art
D: The Mobile Art Container is really interesting. I started working individually with the artists, creatively, and then at a certain point, politically, it’s high fashion and art, and a lot of people in between. You don’t know who you’re working for sometimes. So at the end of the end of the day, I met with the artists again, they didn’t know what I’d been doing. I was really scared that they would say, “this is horrible”. But they actually, most of them, pretty much all of them, liked it.
Y: You were in the project at an early stage?
D: Yes. We were working on two levels, creatively, and technically, moving people through the space, everybody was moving at the same time, same location, it’s like we’re also doing crowd control. People don’t start to bunch up.
Y: These are designed into the sound.
D: Yes, that’s part of the technical part, things get switched around. So that’s frustrating, but we deal with it. I was in England in December, where everything was supposed to be finished, and I was supposed to walk into the space and see all the artwork. When I go here I go here, and I know how long it takes. It’s a perfect world, right? When I got there, in the middle of an open field, there was just a chalk outline on the ground. They told me this will be here, this will be there. You never know…we never actually saw the complete exhibition together until two nights before the opening. So you have to be creative.
Y: I am speculating, but it might have to do with how artists produce these days.
D: I will say this though…it’s exciting to be in a place where everybody is creative. Your problem is, everybody is creative. You can complain people are being too creative, but this is the kind of the problem you want to have.
Y: And you guys can solve it, being professionally and creatively trained.
D: Right, so then your technical expertise is on autopilot. So when it moves on to Tokyo in a couple of months, I will be in Tokyo. I’ll switch a couple of artists around. I think as it travels around the world, it will change.
Cultural critique-wise it’s an experience for me. It’s an art gallery. It’s very well respected artists and they are all doing something related to the commercial project or product. I have talked to some of the different artists about it. I have their takes on it. When you see it you will see that it’s not an ad for the handbag. It’s kind of like a very rebellious…a lot of the artists are very rebellious. It’s also part of the project.
Y: The Container is very close to where our old Star Ferry clock tower was. It raises an interesting question – how do you preserve sound? I don’t like the word preserve because it sounds like you put something in the freezer.
D: Well, in the film world, my mentor, Ren Klyce recently sound designed “Zodiac”, a film about the serial murders in San Francisco. Most of it takes place in the newsroom, over the course of 20 or 30 years in time. It starts with the typewriter. Where do you get that sound? You have to go and find and record all the typewriters…that sound has to be built now. So in one sense, technology is moving so fast we are jumping over things. Yes, we could miss something, for sure.
Y: Which means we really do have to preserve something.
D: Yes. What’s exciting about Hong Kong to me is this total disregard of history. And in a sense, nobody comes here to live in the first place. They come here to do something. It’s a recent development that people choose to stay here, and preserve things. In Hong Kong, we walked through Graham Street, Wellington, Peel, the whole Wet Market scene. Our narrator Shu Qi is saying basically, all that is in front of you, will be gone! So you better take this walk now, because next time you come here, it’s not going to be here!
Y: It’s not like people don’t’ want history, but it’s so recent, it’s right in your face, you don’t know how to take it, like which history?
D: Yes, which history told by whom.
I have another story. I was working on a movie, it’s about the Brooklyn Bridge. I was working in San Francisco and I had to record a bridge. So I went to the Golden Gate Bridge. I went there with a contact microphone and I had to stick it on the bridge. The idea was to record all the vibrations. So I was sticking the microphone to different parts of the Golden Gate Bridge, and getting all these rumbles. And then I finally got to the cables that actually hold up the bridge. So I stuck the microphone there.
Y: How did you get up there?
D: You can actually walk on the bridge. This is post-9/11, there are cameras, they probably thought I was doing something really weird. But nothing dangerous. So I stuck it on the actual cable. And I hit the cable with my hand, and it would make the most, lowest, lowest, strangest, beautiful metallic sound I have ever heard. It’s just gorgeous. I went to the next cable and it was the same, gorgeous sound, except a little bit higher. It’s the biggest string instrument I have ever heard. Going from string to string, I was playing all these different tones. I was thinking if I did it right, I would have recorded all the strings and map it onto a keyboard, and you could play the strings of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was really beautiful sound. Then I went back to New York, to record the real bridge, the one I wanted, the Brooklyn Bridge. I was recording the strings. Nobody stopped me. it didn’t sound as good. I was really bummed out. I was really looking forward to the real bridge. It just sounded dirty. I realized it was like a guitar. You have to replace the strings after a while because they get old and they lose their tones. So the Golden Gate Bridge is a much newer instrument than the Brooklyn Bridge. But it had a musicality I hadn’t thought of before I actually started with the recording. That bridge on the way to the (Hong Kong) airport would be amazing.
Y: That’s very new.
D: So probably too bright.
5. working with sound: brief chat with theatre sound designer Anthony Yeung
D: A Sound effect is what you record in real life. Sound design is what you cannot record in real life and you have to create it. For example, if I can record a dinosaur in real life, that’d be a sound effect. If I can’t I have to design it with other elements. It may be part of the recording of a lion, and then you add a hyena, or maybe some other animals put together, a locomotive train in there, with some low-end punch. However you create that, that’s sound design. Same for atmospheres that don’t really exist, I don’t know, other planets, other psychological states. You can’t record a psychological state. There would be no sound effects. So you will be designing the sound.
Y: Yes, how Mars sounds, and Uranus.
D: Probably like absolute silence.
Y: He once asked me what a sunset sounds like.
A: No, it’s the sun disappearing.
D: What does it sound like?
A: It’s reverse atomic bomb.
D: They must have a recording of the atomic bomb.
A: Change the speed, get the attack. They still used the open reel.
D: So you were cutting tapes? Wow. That’s old school.
A: That’s fun.
D: My friends who have been working on movies for years, they had physical storage problems because they used to have reels of sounds. If you are talking about 56 tracks of sound effects, that’s 56 reels.
A: I am a little bit lucky. I worked in the radio station that time. I can keep the tapes in the studio.
D: I like radio a lot.
Y: Did you see the film Contact?
D: My friend Steve Boeddeker actually designed all those sounds, the radio frequencies and all that. It’s a great world, a very creative world. The people I worked with are very creative.
~end~
INTERVIEW 2 July 21, 2008 Starbucks, IFC, Central
從事舞臺音響工作三十多年, 石達明曾經擔任主管香港政府會堂的音響部門，包括香港文化中心，高山劇場，沙田大會堂，荃灣大會堂等, 在澳洲墨爾本藝術中心作音響系統監督一職， 及中、港、澳洲舞臺音響顧問的工作. 現在致力于舞臺音響教育，績亟培訓下一代。
石 － 石達明
楊 － 楊陽
楊： 你可以講一下你的背景嗎？
石： 我是一個不折不扣的工程師。我看東西是跟據科學，不會迷信。 但你又不可以說我不認識藝術， 因為我在香港大會堂做音嚮工程師差不多十年， 見藝術的東西多得不得了， 腦裡充滿著藝術。我會看到現在的確有好多藝術家和藝術創作， 但提到聲音藝術， 我就會有很多問號， 我會問， 這些藝術家對音嚮的認識有多少？ 很簡單， 你用音嚮來表達你的概念， 你一定要能master音嚮的特性， 比方啦叭本身的特性、 啦叭和啦叭之間的interaction是怎樣？ 還有是啦叭和周圍環境做成甚麽關系和影嚮？我覺得這些比較重要， 一般人對啦叭或者microphone的認識只是留於不太真實， 有點敷淺的感覺， 但 market 又很奇怪， 沒有帶動 education的意識， 人們就以為是用耳朵來猜測這對啦叭或者system的 好與壞， 我越來越覺得要從事這行業，一定要有進一步的認識。
我做了三十多年音嚮工程， 其實都頗專業，不論是在香港或澳洲， 都把握了一些經驗。 我覺得除了耳朵， 我們必須有量度的儀器， 才有客觀的標準， 因為靠主觀的耳朵， 其實很講心情， 今天心情靚， 聽到的都會好一點， 烏雲密佈，情緒差的時候， 結果也會變的， 但實質量度出來的數據就不會變了。我很強調要有scientific approach, 最近我經過一些研究，找到一些特別的programme, 它們是可以給下載的， 只要有電腦， sound card 和 measuring mic就可以測到一個啦叭的好壞、 它的frequency response, harmonics, 可以看它的情況、也可以看到一個啦叭跟另外一個的 interaction 是怎樣，這些都是很好的measuring equipment， 這使我有一對耳朵以外， 也有一雙眼睛，可以分析系統的好壞，還可以讓同行有可以溝通的平臺（。有數據， 對整個行業都會有幫助，所以在未來的日子， 我會編一個課程，大概八至十個課題， 讓人可以學習除了聽， 還可以用眼睛去分析。
說回頭， 這個的確是個很專業的行業，現在香港 的專上 學院都沒有教太多， 特別是舞臺音嚮， recording 方面可能比較充足， 但音嚮或是 electroacoustics是比較不太有人懂，再專門的sound alignment 更加沒有人認識，香港外國都一樣， 我希望有生之年可以多教育下一代。
那麼， 你又如何對這方面有興趣？
楊：首先肯定是我丈夫， 認識他前，我根本不知道有一個叫mastering engineer的工作， 但另外也有更私人的經驗， 就是關於我爸爸，我十二歲的時候他去世，最近幾年我發現我開始忘記他的聲音， 我沒有覺得要找他的錄音或者甚麼， 反而覺得這個我們怎樣記憶聲音的問題很有趣， 就像我們聽到一個老朋友的聲音， 就算見不到都可以認出來。另外就是外在的環境， 天星鐘樓拆了，五個那麽老的鐘的響聲沒有了， 新鐘的聲音的不同， 它的淺，要很久才會像舊鐘一樣， 這麼簡單的道理， 那麽寶貴的聲音，在衝突中犧牲了。對我來講是比較多關於人文的， 社會的，令我對這方面有興趣。
石： 香港其實有很多東西值得保存的， 比方大會堂concert hall, 是acoustics 非常好的hall，雖然在世界上沒有甚麼名氣， 但它是仿效英國Royal Festival Hall的， 出來的效果很不錯。是誰做的我不知道， 可能也沒有紀錄。 這些就是文化遺産，希望大會堂不會拆，如果拆了就很可惜。 現在的改動， 可能已經改了裏面的 acoustics，改了都不知道，比方改了椅子，它本身的吸音量如果大過原本的，就不能做回以前的效果。這些都不是很多人知道。
另外，香港人對冷氣 嘈音的敏感度不夠，一個好的 concert hall應該有好的嘈音標準，即是 Noise Criteria， 大概是 NC-15 至 NC-20 左右， 但往往我們不注重這些嘈音問題， 導致嘈音蓋過原聲，使演出大爲失色。 嘈音方面香港是全球之冠的，好像我現在跟你講話（國金內的Starbucks)， 這裡的 noise criteria已經是很差了，但有時有些酒樓食市，十人大桌，你是沒可能跟對面的人說話的，那麽這些問題是否不能解决？也不是， 只因爲我們沒有這種意識。你做好acoustics，改善一下， 室內不要使用那麽多玻璃或硬面，减低聲音的反射，把聲音吸掉， 我們就不用大聲講說話了。
楊：我們用瓷具和筷子，碰撞的聲音，其實是文化的一部份， 但你的意思是， 只要做好acoustics， 這些習慣都不用改？
石：對， 比方天花用了吸音的才料， 基本上就可以改善。有時用了太多玻璃和鏡，用一些吸音的窗廉，就已經能做成很好的幫助， 或者地板多用地壇都有幫助。還有，好多時環境是沒有嘈音限制的， 所謂嘈音管制，只不過是晚上有人大聲放音樂你可以去投訴的意思， 但在日常生活， 你走過彌敦道，人家爲了找生意就用大聲公，或用PA system大聲叫， 對面街都聽到的， 這絕對是嘈音。我記得有一次我經過羅湖關口， 警察都用大聲公做宣佈， 很幹擾的， 它不是由真的警察說的，而是用recorder不停重覆又重覆。
楊：對，現在public announcement 的現像很嚴重，火車站上落電梯都在不停播放。
石： 那些是提醒大家安全的說話， 其實是不是需要呢？是不是要不斷的勞役我們的耳朵呢？我有很大的疑問。 這是我預測的， 香港人很多東西Number 1, 例如香港最多人近視，我預計香港人有失聰和弱聽的比例跟世界各地比較可能要拿Number 1。
~完~
