= Field recording workshops in Hong Kong 香港田野錄音工作坊 =
2014.11.14-15

2014.11.14@Chai Wan 柴灣工業區

A worker operated the crane to lift blocks of trash onto a huge pontoon ship. I was standing next to the shore, recording the machine crunching sound that came from grinding of aged metal. The worker looked at the often, felt curious what I was doing. I did not avoid having eye contact with him. He tried hard to lift one block few times, but at last he gave up and dropped the trash back to the shore. He looked at me, kind of acknowledged me why he made such a decision.

在起重機裡操作著的工人,把一磚磚的垃圾塊卸到這艘大躉船上。我站在彼岸上,記錄著那些機械裡因金屬老化互相磨擦而產生出來嘎吱作響的聲音。工人瞄了我一眼,對我所做的事情感到好奇,但我沒有避開他的目光。他努力地嘗試著把其中一磚垃圾卸到船上,卸了好幾次還是不成功,最終他放棄了,把這垃圾放回岸上。工人望著我,似是知會我為何他做了這個決定。

  

2014.11.15@Tung Ping Chau 東平洲

There is an abandon house alongside of the beach. The main door was blocked by bars, I circled around and entered through side door. There was garbage and leaves covering the floor, once I stepped into threshold, I heard a sharp cracking sound, I looked down and discovered that was a piece of red tile, which were used for the roof. The doorway led to a small kitchen, when I went further in, there was a living room. I stepped on a piece of wood, I thought it was strong enough to hold my weight, but it didn’t. It is broken into two pieces. There were a lot of broken tile pieces on the floor, which was camouflaged by rotten leaves. The roof was gone, sea wind blew through holes and engulfed the miserable little house.

海灘旁邊有間荒廢的小屋,正門被柵欄封了。我繞著屋子而行,由側門走進屋內,地板滿佈了垃圾與落葉。當我跨過門檻時,聽到一下清脆的碎裂聲音,低頭一看,發現了一塊用來鋪設屋頂的紅色瓦片。沿著門口是個小廚房,當我再往屋內走便是客廳,我踏在一塊木頭上,起初我還以為這木頭能足以承受我的重量,可惜事實並非如此,木頭斷開兩截。這裡有很多破碎的瓦片散落在地板上,但全都被一些腐葉掩蓋著。屋頂早已消失得無影無踪,海風無孔不入,吞噬了這所可憐的小房子。

0127_001SM_chung-1
0127_001SM_chung-2

:: Afterthought 再思 ::

Before the two workshops, I mainly adopt field recording as a supplement of visualization of my work, for instance, I need a recording of sea to allude my location in a video work. Indeed my recording knowledge and practice are being improved after the workshop, but more importantly, it shows me that field recording itself as a form of art, and how it changes my ideology on both listening experience and sensory and bodily perception. I start to rethink that perception is more about mental instead of sensory reception; when we put on headphone and equip with recording devises, our perception is being reconnected to real world through technology, both the sensory and mental experience are being mediate; the fact is, we have been so used to be mediated, and our hearing and listening experience are habituated with technology. A bad headphone and recorder may be resulted in unsatisfactory recording, but it has nothing to do with our live body being in the world, taking off the headphone and just listening, is the best practice to expand my mental capabilities through re-adapting my internal environment to external environment. This is my paradigm shift.

在這兩次工作坊之前,我主要採用田野錄音來補充作品中的可視部分,例如我在錄像作品中需要記錄海的聲音在暗示自己的位置。事實上,工作坊改進了我對於錄音的知識與實踐。而更重要的,是工作坊令我明白田野錄音本身可作為一種藝術形式。而工作坊亦令我改變了固有對於聆聽的意識形態,當中包括聆聽體驗、感官與身體知覺。我開始重新思考知覺應屬於精神上的層面而不是純粹感官上的接收。當我們把錄音裝置上的耳機帶上時,我們的知覺不論在精神與感官上都會被牽引,透過科技來重新連接現實世界。而事實上,我們早就習慣了這種引導方式,習慣科技為我們帶來收聽及聆聽的經驗。使用一副差的耳機和錄音機會得出不盡人意的錄音,但它到底跟我們藉以生活的世界沒多大關係,我們放下耳機側耳傾聽,這已是一種最佳的實踐方法來擴闊我們的精神層面。因應這個轉變,我會重新適應內部與外部的環境。

= Taiwan’s Field Trip and Creation 台灣考察及創作  =
2015.4.3-7 @ Taipei, Kaohsiung, Meinung 台北, 高雄, 美濃

About artwork 關於作品

Distant Wave (18”)

  

After the Civil War and before Cultural Revolution in Mainland China, Chinese Communist Party initiated a series of united front gestures against Nationalist Party in Taiwan, in order to obtain information and setup spy. At the same time, when Taiwan Martial Law and curfew were still enacted, Communists threw boxes of money, valuable, propaganda poster and publication into the sea, and let the sea current bring the goods to coast of Taiwan. In response to such action, Nationalist built concrete barricade and steel fence along coast, encouraged heavy industry to build factories in the south, also, prohibited swimming and fishing, etc.

This specific piece of history fascinates me that the all the above policies aim to prevent citizen to associate with “sea” and “country overseas”, due to the fact that people living along the coast or on island could hardly access to the image/ scenery, under that situation that the path to the source of sound was ironically blocked. In such case, the sound is a metaphor of political oppression, conflict between two parties, a change of life style under government regulation, new emerged industries, geographic relocation, etc. The sound itself may not provide enough information for us to understand the history, but the way that it was presented carries a unique historical significance: a distorted humanity and freedom under such political oppression.

The sound piece is presented in form of a narrative, through the mouth of a middle-age male prayer. When the narrator kneels in front of statues of Gods, he throws poes and the sound echoes inside the temple; he murmurs, asks for help from divination, and it seems he is telling a story that has been forgotten long ago, or he envisions such era through hallucination and his memory.

國共內戰之後與文革之前期間,中國共產黨對台灣國民黨發起了一系列針對性的統一戰略,其中就利用間諜從中獲取情報。與此同時,台灣仍然實施戒嚴與宵禁之際,共產黨員將一些放有大量金錢、財物、宣傳海報及書籍的箱投到大海裡,讓水流將這些物品飄送到台灣的海岸裡。國民黨為了應付中共這種行動,他們便在海岸沿線築起了水泥鋼根的路障與護欄,鼓勵重工業在南部設廠,同時亦嚴禁在這些範圍內游水及釣魚等。
這些特定的歷史事件使我著迷,上述的政策都是為了防止公民聯繫到「海」與「海外國家」,沿海岸或島嶼生活的居民難以進入相關的「圖像」與風景裡,音源亦因而諷刺地受到封鎖。面對政治壓抑、兩黨衝突、政府監管下生活方式的轉變、新興工業、地域轉換等情況下,聲音成為了這些語境下的隱喻。聲音自身未必能提供一個足夠的資訊讓我們了解歷史,但它卻帶有獨特的歷史意義:一種在政治壓抑下扭曲的人性與自由。

我這件聲音作品以敘事的形式呈現,透過一位中年男性禱告者的口中表達出來,當他在神像前跪下時頌讀的詩句與寺內的回音相呼應,他喃喃細語禱求,希望得到預言的指引,看來他在陳說一個已經被遺忘很久以前的故事,或者他從幻覺與記憶中想像出這個時代。


personal website 個人網站:http://www.leekaichung.com/