Our warmest thank you to all participating artists and speakers:
Mike Cooper, Hahn Chu (Friends of the Earth), Phoebe Hui, Jerome Joy, Jaffa Lam, John Lee, Jason Lim, Donna Ong & YC Teo, Beatrix Pang & Siufung, Kacey Wong, Kawai Shiu & Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Patrick Shek, Su Hei, Akio Suzuki, Yan Jun, Anthony Yeung, Miki Yui.

Around sound art festival would not have been possible without the generous support of the following sponsors, co-organizers, and volunteers:
Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Le French May and the Consulate General of France, our sole beverage sponsor San Miguel, our media partner alive not dead,
Hong Kong Electric, Mr Bobby Li, Rainbow Seafood Restaurant, Dawei Charitable Foundation,
Asia One for the excellent printing quality of our programme book,
Osage Gallery for supporting Donna Ong and YC Teo’s collaborative work for Around;
Hong Kong Institute of Acoustics for exchanging web links with soundpocket on the occasion of Around;
Hong Kong Electric volunteers team;
Green Lamma Group;
young docents of HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity;
Para/Site Art Space for lending soundpocket headphones and CD players,
SEE Network, Hong Kong Architecture Centre, The Bookshop by MCCM, aco books, Friends of the Earth, kapok, hulahoop.
Special thanks to Lee Chun Fung and his friends, and Wendy Li, for being around.

Programme highlights, Apr 29 - May 3, 2009
Photos in Lamma-zine by Lamma-Gung

Artist Lin Chi-wei works and lives in Beijing, he shared with us about his video and audio works. Participants experienced the performance - Social Measurement through Sound in the beginning of the sharing. Xu Ya-zhu participated and organized various sound-related projects in Taipei, she defined her career as “culture activator”. Xu Ya-zhu talked about the curatorial practice in Taiwan and Beijing.

…images coming…

2009 November 28 to December 9
If sound can speak… - exhibition and performance
Three emerging Hong Kong artists Joego Chan Yeuk-ming, Attor Cheung Tin-yau and Jantzen Tse Chun-sing to present sound installations and performances in an aging building to listen to.
(an event of DETOUR, Business of Design Week)
…images coming…

2009 October 18
Meeting Yao DaJuin - artist sharing
Yao Dajuin shared his knowledge and experience in his art practice and previous projects at soundpocket in an Sunday afternoon.
…images coming…

2009 October 16
Chinese sound art: 2,500 Years of Listening - public talk by Yao DaJuin (Tawin/PRC)
Founder of China Sound Unit and educator, Yao Dajuin gives a talk addressing the history of Chinese ways of listening and how it compares and conflicts with those of the West.
(an event of October Contemporary 2009 - Now, or Never)
…images coming…

2009 September 24
Presentation of soundpocket on Pecha Kucha Night #6
http://www.pecha-kucha.org/night/hong-kong/6

2009 July
Listen to soundpocket on BBC World Service - Save the Sounds
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003lqz3

2009 May 30
rice, water, beat - soundpocket fundraising

Our sincere thanks to Nelson Hiu, John Lee and Kung Chi Shing, who performed in rice, water, beat at o-veggie to raise funds for soundpocket. Special thanks to Wendy Li for devoting her time and energy to the event.
Amount raised: HK$8,500
We will make prudent use of the donation for soundpocket’s projects in 2009-2010.
…images coming…

2009 April 28
Around sound art festival 2009
Jerome Joy gave a talk on projects by locus sonus to students at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
…images coming…

2009 April 29
Around sound art festival 2009
Jerome Joy performed on the rooftop of Fu Tak Building, Wanchai
…images coming…

2009 May 1
Around sound art festival 2009
Akio Suzuki performed in Tung O, Lamma Island
…images coming…

2009 March 14, 2009
listeningspecial_march14

2009 Jan - Feb

the art of listening series II /《聽者言系列二》
presented by soundpocket / 聲音掏腰包主辦
in conjunction with Hong Kong Sound Station, Para/Site Art Space

Class 1
Date Feb 12, 2009 (Thursday)
Time 6’30 – 9’00pm
Place soundpocket, Unit C, 10/F, Gee Chang Industrial Building, Tokwawan, Kowloon
Title Sound of Music – listening to cultures

Speaker Mike Cooper
For the past 40 years Mike Cooper has been an international musical explorer, performing and recording, solo and in a number of inspired groupings and a variety of genres. Initially a folk-blues guitarist and singer songwriter his work has diversified to include improvised and electronic music, live music for silent films, radio art and sound installations. He is also a music journalist, writing features for magazines, particularly on Pacific music and musicians, a visual artist, film and video maker, collector of Hawaiian shirts and appears on more than 60 records to date. Ambient Electronic Exotica is the genre and subtitle of recent solo performances, often accompanied with film or video, and three c.d. releases, ‘Kiribati’, ‘Globe Notes’ and ‘Rayon Hula’. Ambient field recordings collected in the Pacific, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, sampled, looped, treated electronically, and combined with acoustic or electric lap steel guitar improvisations to create Virtual Soundscapes. Cooper credits the writing and recorded works of ethnomusicologist Steve Feld as a major influence on this latest phase of his music, in particular Feld’s work with the Kaluli people in Papua New Guinea and the concept of what they call ‘Lift Up Over Sounding’ - ‘Unison or discretely bounded sounds do not appear in nature; all sounds are dense, multilayered, overlapping, alternating, and interlocking. A constantly changing figure and ground…a spatio-acoustic mosaic of ambient and human sounds…a texture without gaps, pauses or breaks…part relations that are simultaneously in synch while out of phase.’ ( from Sound and Sentiment-Steve Feld).

More about Mike Cooper

Class 2
Date Feb 21, 2009
Time 2 – 5pm
Place soundpocket, Unit C, 10/F, Gee Chang Industrial Building, Tokwawan, Kowloon
Title Sound of Music|Music of Sound
The term “organized sound”, coined by Edgard Varèse (often misattributed to John Cage), has gained such popularity as a succinct modernistic definition of music for the past few decades that the term itself has almost become a cliché, or at its worst a fake badge of Know-all. Part lecture, part workshop, part listening party, part nostalgic gathering, composer Kawai Shiu will discuss the intricate relation of sound and music. Not aiming at a wiki-way of knowledge transmission, the event encourages the participants to interpret their personal relationship to the subjects.
(Optional: Bring your instruments or sound devices to be part of the event)

Speaker Kawai Shiu
As a versatile artist, Kawai Shiu has received numerous awards in recognition of his work. Composition awards include those from the Vienna Modern Masters’ Orchestral Recording Award, the Rudolf Nissim Award, Frederic Goossen Composition Prizes, ASCAP Awards, Kent Kennan Scholarships, and funding from the American Music Center. Other Commissions and performances include those for Endymion at the Purcell Room, the Cheltenham Festival, the International Clarinet Course in Spain, Dartington Festival, the World Saxophone Congress, and the Pacific Contemporary Music Festival. Kawai’s music has been recorded by CRI, Vienna Modern Masters, Ablaze Records, and Soy Sauce Records. His music is also widely broadcasted on radio worldwide and online, including a featured series at RTHK-4 and a live broadcast program by Chicago based new music ensemble CUBE. Kawai is also a prolific writer on poetry, drama, and writings on music and art criticism. He is also a credited contributor to instrumental pedagogical publications. Kawai has served as the Music Director of the British Royal National Theatre’s production of Euripides’ Bacchai, directed by Sir Peter Hall. As a researcher, Kawai was a Research Fellow at Swiss Paul Sacher Stiftung. A lecture performance co-developed by composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Kawai on Paul Klee has been presented at Hayward Gallery (London), British Royal Academy of Arts, and Lucerne Festival. Kawai has been appointed the Honorary Visiting Professor of Music at the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Tasmania and at present Assistant Professor at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. For his contributions to the musical field, Kawai Shiu was selected for inclusion in International Who’s Who in Music and Musicians’ Directory, among other bio-dictionaries.

More about Kawai Shiu

Class 3
Date Feb 28, 2009 (Saturday)
Time 2 – 5pm
Place soundpocket, Unit C, 10/F, Gee Chang Industrial Building, Tokwawan, Kowloon
Title sound, lake, rain
Maridet recently came back from the Mamori Art Lab, a Barcelona-based cultural organization that offers workshops to artists of various disciplines, including music and sound. He gives a presentation of his creative experimentation with local residents of Mamori, one of the many lakes surrounding the Brazilian part of the Amazon River, and the inspiration he received from a sensational environment.
Speaker Cedric Maridet
B. 1973. Works and lives in Hong Kong since 1999 and is currently a full-time PhD candidate in media art in the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on soundscape theories and on the paradigm between sound-event and sound-object. He founded Hong Kong based electronic label monème in June 2004 as the main platform to release his works [_habitus, 2006]. He has participated in performances in Hong Kong and exhibitions in Hong Kong, Macau, New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin, Vienna and Cambridge. He was awarded Prize of Excellence in the Hong Kong Art Biennial 2005 for Huangpu [video collected in Hong Kong Museum of Art], and was invited to be artist in residence at the Hong Kong Visual Art Centre and in Mamori ArtLab in Brazil. He is also a contributor to the open microphones project of French-based research lab in audio art Locus Sonus (École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence, École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nice Villa Arson and Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Marseille). His works focus on field recordings and soundscape composition, audio-vision, the construction of altered sonorous spaces, and aural architecture.

More about Cedric Maridet

Fee – HK$140/ class [HK$390 for three classes]
Sign up for the classes by emailing soundpocket at yangy@soundpocket.org.hk
Enquiries – Yeung Yang 90403877

~ Special thanks to Hong Kong Sound Station, Para/Site Art Space, for publicity support ~

2008 Dec - 2009 Jan 11

the art of listening series I /《聽者言系列一》
especially designed for practicing or prospective artists interested in making sound works /
特別針對有興趣製作聲音作品的藝術家和藝術學生

Veteran artist Frog King once said that installation art was first made by stage set makers in the theatre. “the art of listening series I” presented by soundpocket aims at matching knowledge and know-how from the theatre to the needs of contemporary art production. It is designed for practicing and prospective artists who are interested in making sound works. It suits in particular installation artists dealing with the relation between sound and space, and artists whose work with recorded or live audio components. It enhances and sharpens skills artists may already have in making works with sound as a prominent component. It inspires artists who may be just starting to think about trying out sound works.
Participants will learn about the specifications and characteristics of a range of microphones and speakers, how to critically and creatively listen to and interpret indoor and outdoor spaces with microphones, indoor sound systems, and technical know-how that is crucial to theatre production and applicable to contemporary art production.
蛙王說過， 裝置藝術源於舞台設計。 聲音掏腰包推出《聽者言系列一》旨在讓舞台工作人員跟當代藝術工作者分享他們的技術、理論、知識和經驗。
本系列特別針對有興趣製作聲音作品的藝術家和藝術學生、對聲音及空間的關系有興趣的裝置藝術家和藝術學生、及任何對錄音及現場音響有興趣的藝術家和藝術學生。
本系列分三節，內容包括理論、導賞和實習。第一節主題為西方舞台音響歷史和演變，及應用與研讀舞台技術於舞台以外。第二節主題為各種不同的話筒和揚聲器的特性和用法，及室內音響系統的種類和特性 。第三節主題為練習聆聽和學習如何應用各種不同的話筒詮釋室內及室外空間。
*The main language of all sessions will be Cantonese supplemented by some English and
Mandarin where necessary ／ 授課語言主要為廣東話， 有需要的式候以英語和普通話補充。

About the tutors 導師簡歷
*All tutors have fifteen to twenty years of experience in theatre production and/or audio industry, active in art and commercial projects. / 各導師具備十五至二十年舞台、音響專業及商業項目經驗。

Anthony Yeung 楊我華 / mastering engineer and theatre sound designer
Billy Wong 黃漢基 / audio system consultant
Christopher Johns 莊繼滔 / theatre sound designer and Head of 莊繼滔 / Head of Dept of Entertainment Design and Technology, HKAPA

SERIES I : technical and practical by professionals 內容
Class 1 Dec 14, 08 (Sunday) / 2-5pm / AYM Studio, Tokwawan
Theatre Audio: histories, systems and configuration by Billy Wong and Anthony Yeung
Sound design for Looking for Antonio Mak contemporary art exhibition at Museum of Art (on show until Jan 28, 2009)

第一節主題為西方舞台音響歷史和演變，及應用與研讀舞台技術於舞台以外
Class 2 Dec 28, 08 (Sunday) / 2-5pm / AYM Studio, Tokwawan
Listening to spaces – technicalities of field recording by Anthony Yeung (for artists
interested in sound works)
認識各種不同的話筒和揚聲器之特性和用法，及室內音響系統的種類和特性
Class 3 Jan 11, 09 (Sunday) / 2-5pm / AYM Studio, Tokwawan
Listening to spaces – field recording theories and practices by Anthony Yeung
練習聆聽和學習如何應用各種不同的話筒詮釋室內及室外空間

2008 November 29

soundpocket recorded live the Touching Sound concert by John Lee at Nam Chung

Dec 2008
soundpocket participates in Another Space - Hotel Space Concept Art Exhibition / 另·空间 - 酒店空间概念创作展

soundpocket’s piece -
Title of work: The Window / 窗口
Mock set-up: on a window, install a sound bug speaker connected to any audio player with headphone-jack out / 模疑装置: 把具有吸盘的sound bug 扬声器紧贴窗口, 配上任何声音播放系统
Concept:
Windows in modern hotel rooms are designed to stay closed. They are transparent barriers that separate the inside from the outside. They present the perception of safety for the traveler in a foreign land. They frame the foreign into a distant view. They keep it under control. They purify.
Closed windows are also part of the wider global phenomenon of indoor living, the result of intense urbanization. How much time do we spend indoors every day?
In face of barriers, one tends to break. The Window takes a different approach. It brings the windows back to life by making them physical. It makes them speak. It asks, Whose imperative is it to tame the foreign? How has the modern hotel participated in making taming part of the traveler’s package?
Slowly and gently, place your palms on the window. Slowly and gently, press your ear against The Window.
Lean. Listen. Imagine.

现代社会的酒店, 窗口往往是关着的。 它是个透明界线, 把内外分隔。 它给异地的旅者安全的印象; 它把异地纳入框架。它操控; 它净化。
关着的窗口也是极度城市化的现象 – 我们每天有多少时间活在室内一个关闭着的保安空间?
遇上界线, 我们要冲破。窗口选择了另外一个进路。 窗口要寻回窗口的物质性; 要窗口说话。它要问, 谁要驯服异者?酒店如何参与把驯服异者变成承包旅游的一部分?
轻轻地, 把你的手放在窗口上。 轻轻地, 把你的耳朵贴近窗口。
亲近, 聆听, 想象。

Another Space in Shenzhen / 另·空间 深圳站
Time / 时间：Dec 7 - 14, 2008 / 2008年12月7日-14日
Place / 地点：F14, F518 Idea Land, Bao’an Area, Shenzhen, China / 深圳市宝安中心区F518时尚创意园14栋

(Will be tour in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu, the specific time will re-released / 将于2009年在北京，上海，广州，成都巡展，具体时间再公布）

参展名单 Exhibitors List

柏志威 Bai Zhiwei
曹丹 Cao Dan
CLOOZ组合：程君 Jun + 卢俊 Bibi + 陈洪伟 Victor
邓瑜 Deng Yu
冯志峰 Fanci
黑一烊 Hei Yiyang
黄帅 Huang.S
黄薇 Mee Wong
黄雪冬 Huang Xuedong
黄周妥 Huang Zhoutuo
李伟斌 Ben
李昱昱 Yuyu
刘世贵 Jason
MEI：Carp + Miss Mei
Paul Coquerel
Philip Tinari
苏焊光 Alex So
糖果猫猫 Popil
杨阡 Yang Qian
杨阳+声音掏腰包 Yueng Yang + SoundPocket
张淼 Zhang Miao
朱德才 Eric Zhu
字态 Zitype

Host / 主办：
F518 Idea Land / F518时尚创意园
Avant-garde Art Hotel / 前岸艺术酒店

Organizer / 承办：zitype workshop / 字态工作室
Co-operative / 协办：Shen Zhen Zhang Miao Architects Co., Ltd / 张淼建筑设计事务所
Curator / 策展人：Imagine Wong / 黄立光

2008 November - December

soundpocket presents sound installation work “WATER RECLAMATION” by YUEN Cheuk Wa, at Broadway Cinematheque, Yaumatei. Thanks to Kubrick’s Amanda and MCCM Creations’ Mary for their encouragement and support.

2008 November 1

soundpocket collaborated with MCCM Creations book launch by offering recordings of authors at IFC Kubrick

2008  September

soundpocket offered on-site sound effect design for LAMMA STORY book launch

2008 August

recording of Blackout Meditative Concert and rehearsal available for listening at soundpocket

2007  June-July

in midair, sound works hong kong 2007 (curated by Yeung Yang)

In the documentary film Modulations directed by Lara Lee, Karlheinz Stockhausen spoke briefly about his works that explore, in his words, the “micro-world of the acoustic vibrations” (p.87) with the tam-tam (commonly known as the gong). The film led me to this book, among many others - how musical instruments may also be understood as sound machines, how music may also be understood as a particular organization of sound, how players and performers give shape to sound with their bodies. As a concerned outsider to music and sound and whatever they can mean, I find myself initiated to a new wide world.

Stockhausen speaks with honesty and a sense of humor, and at times, with the voice of an advocate who would like to see a few changes in our ways of listening urgently. It is not new to say that “We are no longer, have long ceased to be in fact, an aural society, one which communicates mainly by hearing. Our entire system of values, of the things we accept to be true, is based on the visual sense. You have to sign a paper because your word is not enough to be trusted.” (p.26) It is however timely and thought-provoking to sound the warning of how “acoustically deaf”, how “incapable [we are] of noticing the acoustic pollution of the world”, if yet again. And Stockhausen isn’t just presenting a problem. He takes it up as his own, as a task with profound implications for the future. One example is his encounter with Theodor Adorno and the insight he gained from it. He recounts in the book how he was playing Messiaen’s Sonata to Adorno, who “couldn’t understand it at all”. I am not familiar with Messiaen’s work, but I know Adorno as a philosopher who had lamented on the “regression of listening” since music became reproducible on a mass scale. Stockhausen recalled how he reacted, “So I stood there on the stage in short pants, looking like a schoolboy, and defended this piece…I said, but Professor [Adorno], you are looking for a chicken in an abstract painting. That’s when I began to have my doubts about intellectuals and so-called specialists, even among the avant-garde. It showed that even though Adorno had been a student of Alban Berg and had composed a great deal…he was not basically a creative person. A creative person is always most excited when something happens that he cannot explain, something mysterious or miraculous…” (p.36) In the current social environment where being “creative” has become such a hype and slanted towards the making, making and more making of things (so that they sell?) without being clear on the references and inheritance of making (eg. patterns of nature as the reference of creativity, curiosity itself etc.), Stockhausen’s little story ought to remind us of a few things more primary.

His calls for composers to spend time in a recording studio, for performers to not just play their own instruments but listen to others, and for anyone to “Play anything” to “discover the micro-world of the acoustic vibrations, amplify it and transform it electronically” (p.87) are small steps we could all take to get in touch with that which could only be revealed and not made.

///

“the heap of one’s own echo” - Yasmina Reza, Hammerklavier, faber&faber, 2000
reviewed by Yeung Yang

Books sitting on the shelf are not static stuff. They groove and dance, until they are noticed, but never fully - that would have been Too Much, the title of one story in Reza’s book.
I share with you the mere and the overflown: “The world is ‘uncountable’, filled up with things and books, and books about things, the world accumulates and books accumulate what the world accumulates and seeing on one’s table books and more books of photographs, about art and books about other books and getting ready in one’s turn to fit the world onto a page, that vile accumulation of babbling, to add to the heap of one’s own echo…”
Sometimes, forgetting to breathe helps.

///

All interviews are transcribed in the languages the interviewees used during the interviews.
訪問以被訪者的採用的語言筆錄。

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~

All interviews are transcribed in the languages the interviewees used during the interviews.
訪問以被訪者的採用的語言筆錄。

INTERVIEW 3 Nov 13, 2008

Yannick Dauby is a sound artist influenced by the natural sciences and social sciences. He spent several years in Taiwan recently to conduct field recordings of natural and cultural soundscapes. He talked to Edwin Lo, an emerging sound artist in Hong Kong, about his work.

YD: Yannick Dauby
EL: Edwin Lo

EL: Could you briefly introduce yourself?

YD: My Chinese name is Peng Ye-Sheng (澎葉生) and my favourite activity is going for a walk. When someone asks me what is my activity, I used to say “Sound art”. This includes a lot of practices including the collection and the manipulation of sounds, but the most important one, or at least the one that I breed the most, is the pleasure of outdoor listening. Listening to details, structures, evolution, behaviours, patterns, relationships, etc…

EL: Could you let us know how you start working with sound? Is there anything or anyone special that have influenced you into taking this path?

YD: I have a long-term fascination for extra-European musical traditions. That was probably the starting point: discovering music as if you arrive at an unknown place. And like many others the largest part of my listening experience of music came from recorded sounds. I was not introduced by someone specifically, but one element helped me so much for my orientation - public libraries. As far as I remember, I am used to the exploration of archives, of documents, as it is an incredible opportunity to travel through sound and music.

By chance I was in contact with experimental music (in fact an Eliane Radigue concert in a chapel…), and I immediately wanted to immerge myself into that, through studying electroacoustic composition and at the same time discovering large areas of less institution-related musical forms. Many artists gave me inspiration, but I would say that it is much more the cohabitation of different musical practices (from Uzbek music to industrial music to Ligeti) that made me think a bit about working with sound.

EL: When I visit your website, Kalerne, I discover that many of your works are often related to natural environment and natural phenomenon and you are still actively investigating this aspect. It seems that, for me, you are doing something like sound art as a multi-disciplinary approach which makes various connection or research with sound. What do you think about that?

YD: I am from a mid-sized city, a quite boring one from a cultural point of view, but I always have been deeply connected to the surrounding Alps and the Mediterranean Sea. I was not supposed to make music or sounds. I was more expecting spending my life studying lifeforms: oceanography, practice of geology at a very early age with my parents and more recently interest in ecology and ethology. For sure this interest for natural environment and animals is much more important than my studies. I find in there a lot of ideas and inspiration. I rarely open a book about music but I am always attracted by researches about animal behaviours, the most influential ones being the work of Estonian biosemiotics pionneer Jakob Von Uexküll and the French philosopher and ethologist Dominique Lestel. So, I would say that for me natural environment feed my artistic practice but at the same time field recordings and artistic activities are just a way to explore and learn about natural phenomena and environments.

Another attraction pole is the study of extra-European cultures. Ethnography and cultural anthropology are fascinating not only for the subject they deal with but also for the methods they use (participatory observation, description of daily life, immersion in a different social context). These help a lot when dealing with topics such as the listening of the environment.

About the multi-disciplinary approach, I would say that natural sciences such as ethology and social sciences such as ethnology provide complementary concepts and tools, all of them being based on in-site observation and interpretation through writing. I would say that for me working with sound, has to do with a certain kind of observation (= listening, recording, describing) and writing (= decision of what is relevant, creating relations, transmitting an experience). And reciprocally sound art can become a relevant tool for these scientific fields.

EL: You have been staying in Taiwan for some time. Can you let us know the background of this long trip? What is your sound experience in Taiwan? What are the things that impress you most? Is there any difference of sound with any place you had been before?

YD: Before coming to Taiwan, I never lived for a long time in another place than France. So, I still don’t know if my experiences in Taiwan are specific to this country, or if they are the consequence of my own move from a well-known place to a completely new one.

I came here in 2004 with my partner, visual artist Wan-Shuen Tsai. We were in residency at Taipei Artist Village. Immerged during one month in the city was quite a shock. The sounds of the urban environment are so loud here, the traffic is so invasive, that I just couldn’t or didn’t want to listen too much. Later, while living in Taipei neighborhood during one year, I noticed that my listening in the city was always limited, protective and passive. At the contrary, the vision was enhanced, leading me to practice more photography than phonography!

But each time I have been able to go out of the city, or even when finding quieter shelters such as garden or old houses, ears began to be highly active trying to catch all these unidentified sounds. With the exception of language (that I am still learning at a very beginner’s level) ,I would say that the most surprising phenomena is the way I progressively appropriate the different sounds (from the tree frogs to the metro through the typhoons), not only through identification but also because I associate so many emotions and physical sensations with them.

EL: Regarding your activities in Taiwan, like the sound art seminar, the art residency and Transonic 2008, how do you feel and how would you conclude these activities?

YD: For sure I don’t have a conclusion! I see it more like an on-going process of cultural immersion and development of my point of view. The artist-residency was an opportunity to be in contact with the local soundscape, and I’m still working on collecting sounds, sharing them and working with them. The sound art seminar evolved into lectures in various universities and school, and right now I am working in a Hakka community with kids from the countryside, discussing with them about musical traditions and soundscape. All these creative and pedagogic activities are for me a way to interact with and to learn about this country I am living in.

EL: The very first time I get to know you is through your website, Kalerne. Why do you establish Kalerne? Is there any story or meaning behind it?

YD: It came from regular and repetitive questions through mailing-list or individual emails: how do you make contact microphones, what is binaural microphone, and so on… So I decided to provide my own experiences about that, in the hope that someone would find them interesting, and that some others would share new ways of using them. Then when I restarted my studies, because of the lack of communication between students who were supposed to do theoretical research, I decided to write my thesis on-line, just to make it possible for anyone to criticize it, to comment on and discuss about it. Progressively it became for me a kind of permanent non-physical workshop. Some place where I can develop ideas, openly.

EL: The first official release of Kalerne, interestingly, is not from you, but Marc Namblard. What is the story behind this publication?

YD: Marc discovered the sounds of frozen lakes years ago, at the same time with another sound recordist Boris Jolivet. The first time Marc made me listening to these sounds I was stunned by the phenomenon itself but also by the quality of the recordings. During my last year in Taiwan, I began to make CD editions for special contexts such as creative markets, Marc told me that he would make something for me. Listening to the result, I didn’t think twice. I wanted to release it as a CD because such work really needs to be shared, and especially because this soundwork is a long duration listening experience, not a series of samples, not a rough field recording. It is a real proposition for the listener. This is how Kalerne Editions started.

EL: I read your essay about soundscape and sound art, honestly, your words really mean so much to me that somehow solved my deadlock in my mind. Sound art is not some kinds of technical operation of sound but more importantly is an experience for listeners. Is there any thing that makes you thinking in such way? Do your words reflect your observation of the current sound art scene (if it is exists)?

YD: Behind any technological tool, there is a kind of behaviour. The design, the possibilities and limitations are preparing for this behaviour. Press one button when you want and then you memorize sound. Therefore, I often encountered people hoping or criticizing the fact that in order to produce a sound artwork or at least to record an interesting sound, the technical operation is sufficient. But all of that is very weak consideration for the sensitivity of listeners.

In fact spending years behind microphones and loudspeakers doesn’t increase one’s technical efficiency. Such skills need so short a time to be learnt, it is so easy to buy and use audio equipment nowadays. But what change throughout the years of sound practice is the perception: the listening sharpens, becomes smoother or just adapts to the context. Sound art is about this evolution in one’s listening. Sound art practice makes the artist find a listening point of view, and it makes the audience share this listening point of view. Of course, I won’t say that my ears are better than 10 years ago! It is much more a special relationship to sounds that is permanently changing. I see it like a house whose shape is slowly changing through the weeks.

EL: Could you tell us what kind of equipment you are using right now?

YD: Since years, I haven’t change the kind of tools I use: no real studio, working at home only, with a pair of normal loudspeakers, with a normal software for editing and mixing. I have another piece of software for live interactions with sounds and building automatic systems. And I am always carrying various kind of microphones (from lo-tech home-built things to condensers ones), a good recorder and headphones (the same for the last 10 years!) in my back-pack.

EL: Any project or event you are working or planning right now?

YD: I am still trying to catch frogs! I hope to publish this month a CD devoted to Taiwan’s amphibians. I am collecting these sounds since several years, and hope to cover the whole species present in Taiwan. I already have half of the species, and it will take me years to listen and record the shyest and rarest one. I am trying to make this CD an aesthetic listening experience as well as some useful tool for naturalists.

By coincidence, I have also the opportunity to work in Hakka community, and I am collecting Bayin music around temples, and during weddings or funeral ceremonies. I still don’t know why I am documenting this practice. Maybe it is a way for me to be introduced to this musical form. Then I have also several collaboration projects I would like to develop as soon as I can meet again my remote friends.

~end~

coming soon…
John Lee, Ocean Chan, and Black talked to Yeung Yang about the concept behind Blackout Meditative Concert, and their personal initiation into voice works.
李耀誠 (框鼓、喉唱等) 、陳偉光 (尺八、喉唱) 、素黑 (銅謦、情感聲音、尺八) 談全黑靜心音樂會的理念，以及聽和唱的經驗。

We have the following individuals, companies and organizations in addition to our honorary advisors to thank, for their time, energy, ideas, encouragement, and support:
Anthony Yeung Mastering Studio, Billy Larry, Codesign, Mike Cooper, Chris Lau, Wendy Lee Kwok-ying, Edwin Lo, Emergency Lab, MCCM Creations, Para/Site Art Space, Ellen Pau, SEE Network, Madeleine Slavick.
If we have missed you on this list, you know who you are. Thank you.

We need your support to better our listening environment.

Please donate to:
soundpocket limited / HSBC 004-813-272671-001
A receipt from soundpocket will be sent to all our patrons upon receipt of all donations.

*ALL DONATIONS ARE TAX DEDUCTIBLE

sounds ice-cream-cool! ben and jerry’s uses sound to chill ice-cream.

merry christmas from microwave ovens…lots of them

Pirates attacked a Singapore cruise ship with over 1,000 people on board on Nov 20, 2008. The Straits Times reported that the captain accelerated and left the pirates behind. But there was another tactic that saved everyone on board: to use a long-range acoustic device that blasts a painful wave of sound to distract the pirates. Another such use was documented, with explanations of how they work - contemporary manifestations of what French thinker Rabelais had written of seafarers’ experiences 500 hundred years ago, and of the Greek mythology of the Siren’s songs that caused shipwrecks

Kraftwerk concert in Singapore (Dec 3, 2008) was a blast!! As if worried the audience will be overly blasted, ear plugs were made available at the entrance with a sign saying, “in case the music is too loud”.

a bird that imitates the sounds of her environment! 一隻會模仿環境聲音的小鳥

the Honda Choir 車聲歌詠團

sonic postcards project 聲音明信片

listen for extra terrestrial signals 尋找外太空訊號

last update - Apr 2, 2009

details here soundpocket_fundraiserMay30,2009

soundpocket supports not just an art form, but ideas and possibilities that engage with aesthetically meaningful, culturally-grounded and publicly relevant sonic practices, which have a lot to teach about how we understand the world and the experiences yet to be valued.

IF YOU LISTEN, YOU CAN BE ANYWHERE
Tell us about your vision, what you think of ours, to debate and discuss. Please leave us your EMAIL.

soundpocket 扮演宣傳、教育、促進與收集的角色。我們涉足聲音、藝術與文化,發現聲音與不同的藝術形式(包括視覺藝術，裝置藝術，音樂，戲劇，舞蹈等)有著多樣化和動態的關係；在不同的文化背景下為我們的生活賦予意義。我們希望與所有對聲響有同樣興趣的人共事。

參考閱讀：《傾聽：用有孔的口袋收集聲音》（刊登於《號外》2008年六月號）

Founding Member & Executive Director
YEUNG YANG 楊陽
is an independent curator, writer and university lecturer. Upon graduating from Yale University
with an M.A. in anthropology, she worked as a documentary video director at Radio Television
Hong Kong. She graduated in 2004 with a PhD in Intercultural Studies at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong. Exhibitions she curated include “in midair, sound works hong kong 2007” (Jun, 2007),
“Art Responds to 14QK” (Nov 2007), “Nocturne, Alfred Ko solo photography exhibition” (Apr,
2008), “The Table” (Dec, 2008). She has more than eight years of teaching and curriculum design
experience. She is currently Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Cultural and Religious
Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. She founded soundpocket in 2008 to promote
interdisciplinary research, curatorial practices and public education in sound, art and culture.

Chairman, Board of Directors
CHRISTOPHER JOHNS 莊繼昌
is Head of the Department of Entertainment Design and Technology of the Hong Kong Academy
for Performing Arts. An internationally acclaimed sound design and engineer, he has worked with
Sir Richard Eyre, Phylida Lloyd, Trevor Nunn, Robert Lepage and Peter Garbriel.

Directors
ERIC DELANNOY
is an art lover and art collector who has been living in Hong Kong since the 1980s. He has a
business background and is currently planning a recurrent public sculpture event in Hong Kong.

STELLA FONG   方詠甄
received her graduate curating training at the Royal College of Art, London. She has curated
numerous contemporary art exhibitions in Hong Kong and the UK, the most recent one being
Beautiful Journey, Beautiful World - The art container exhibition in West Kowloon Cultural District,
Hong Kong. In 2007, she received the Dr Joseph K.W.Li Arts Fellowship of the Asian Cultural
Council to pursue research in the US. She is currently curator at the Hong Kong Heritage
Museum.

PARRY TAM
has over 13 years experience as entrepreneur and business owner. His expertise is in business
planning, strategy, profitable negotiations, and operations. He is also well-versed in music
arranging, music composing, film scoring and producing, which led him to independent music
publishing and co-founding Asiavibe.com in 1999, Asia first e-commerce music site. It won Best
Asian Music Site in 2000 from Asiaweek/ CNN.

Advisors
JOHN DREVER
is an award-winning composer with an international research profile working in the fields of sonic
art, digital media, soundscape studies and interdisciplinary collaboration. He is also reputed for
fostering new channels of dialogues among the fields of music, sound design, new media and
other environments. He is currently Lecturer in Composition and Head of the Unit for Sound
Practice Research at the Department of Music, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

KAWAI SHIU
As a versatile artist, Kawai Shiu has received numerous awards in recognition of his work.
Composition awards include those from the Vienna Modern Masters’ Orchestral Recording Award,
the Rudolf Nissim Award, Frederic Goossen Composition Prizes, ASCAP Awards, Kent Kennan
Scholarships, and funding from the American Music Center. Other Commissions and performances
include those for Endymion at the Purcell Room, the Cheltenham Festival, the International
Clarinet Course in Spain, Dartington Festival, the World Saxophone Congress, and the Pacific
Contemporary Music Festival. Kawai has served as the Music Director of the British Royal National
Theatre’s production of Euripides’ Bacchai, directed by Sir Peter Hall. As a researcher, Kawai was
a Research Fellow at Swiss Paul Sacher Stiftung. A lecture performance co-developed by
composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Kawai on Paul Klee has been presented at Hayward Gallery
(London), British Royal Academy of Arts, and Lucerne Festival. Kawai has been appointed the
Honorary Visiting Professor of Music at the Conservatorium of Music at the University of
Tasmania and at present Assistant Professor at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

MC YAN MC 仁
is a musician, graffiti artist, and rapper. He is founder of “Fu©KinMusic” and Chinese hardcore
streetgear label ” NingSiBuQu”.

NGOR-WAH ANTHONY YEUNG 楊我華
graduated from the School of Technical Arts at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in
Theatre Sound Design and Music Recording in 1991. He has worked with City Contemporary
Dance Company, Hong Kong Ballet, Hong Kong Art Festival, Ching Ying Theatre, Radio 4 Radio
Television Hong Kong, Chinese Music Virtuosi, Chor Fung Ming Theatre Company and so on.
In 2003, He received the ‘Best Sound Design’ award at the 12th Hong Kong Drama Awards with
the Chung Ying Theatre Company’s production, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ and participated in the 50th
Venice Biennale with Para/Site Collective. In 2007, in collaboration with Dr. Kawai Shiu, he was
commissioned a sound installation work ‘Still Moving’ in the event ‘in midair - sound works hong
kong 2007’.

contact us at info@soundpocket.org.hk