= Reflection 感想 =

This year’s Mentorship Programme invited Catherine Clover and Chan Sai-lok to guide us through a venture in sound and writing.

I was intrigued by this theme; while I used to pay more attention to the visual arts than the sound arts, I often wondered what the sounds would be like for the happenings and contexts on the screen.

The soundwalk led by Catherine made me aware of the difficulty of recording sounds with words and not audio. I only recorded the bird calls with onomatopoeia; but I found that different birds sounded rather similar but had different acoustic sources. I couldn’t even identify some of the species I heard … In retrospect, I think that mark-making with words would have been easier.

Our sharing was very interesting and showed different ways to record sound, not only the sounds of birds, but also the sounds of the environment, and the conversations between humans … Our sharing has added another dimension to the recording of sounds.

Chan Sai-lok also shared a lot of work relating to writing and sound, including paintings and plenty of literary works, like poetry and prose. I am always drawn to typesetting, because the gaps between words and lines give a rhythm to reading. To be honest, reading or comprehension were never my strengths and I always got an F for reading comprehension at school. Our different interpretations and discussions of poetry and prose helped me better understand the content of the texts and the intentions of the authors, as well as the possibilities for textual and audible expression. The surreal tranquillity of the bowl breaking in Yank Wong’s Cracks of Borscht left me in awe.

In the “In One Ear and Write Out the Other” workshop I felt more like one of the participants than an artist-mentee. Each of us had to design an exercise with sound in relation to the areas we were familiar with. We discussed how these areas that were seemingly unrelated to sound or writing (e.g. the body, space, the visual) could complement the listening and creative experience as a whole.

I have learnt so much from the other fellows throughout the whole programme and workshop series, and the responses from the participants motivated me to keep exploring approaches to and possibilities of writing sounds.

今年的Mentorship Programme邀請了Catherine Clover和阿三（陳世樂）帶領，探索聲音與文字的關係。

這個主題我頗感興趣。以前，比起聲音藝術，我更常留意視覺藝術，但同時會想像畫面中發生的事情或環境，會有怎樣的聲音呢？我想在閲讀文字的時候也有點像這樣的情況吧。

記得Catherine帶領的soundwalk讓我感受到以文字（而非錄音）的形式記錄聲音有一定的難度。當要寫下雀鳥的聲音時，我只能用擬聲字詞記錄，但不同雀鳥發出的聲音也很相似，聲源也不同，更甚是我不認識雀鳥的品種…這時想起用痕跡記錄（Mark Making）配合文字，才比較輕鬆一點。

大家的分享很有趣，大家都有著不同的方法記錄聲音，也有記錄雀鳥以外的聲音，例如環境聲、人的對話…這些分享都令整個聲音的記錄更立體。

阿三也分享了很多與文字和聲音有關的作品，除了畫作，更有大量的詩詞和散文等文學作品。我比較喜歡文字的排版，因為在朗讀的時候，文字間距和行距會營造出節奏感。其實我不太善於閲讀和理解，以前閱讀理解都是拎F的，但在大家分享對詩詞散文的不同解讀和討論後，就開始比較容易進入文字內容當中並明白作者的用意，亦認識以文字描述或表達聲音的可能性。特別對黃仁逵的《羅宋裂痕》有印象，現在都還記得盤子裂開但卻寧靜的感覺。

自己在《左耳入右手出》工作坊中雖然作為藝術家學員，但自覺像是其中一位參加者。大家都以自己熟悉的範疇設計了各種和聲音有關的練習，並討論這些看似和聲音及文字無關的範疇（例如身體、空間、視覺…等等）如何可以在整個聆聽及創作經驗中相輔相成。我也在整個活動（programme）和工作坊的過程中從大家身上取了經，而參加者的反應也令我繼續思考書寫聲音的方法及可能性。