sound composition, 2006 17’20 5.1 surround sound DTS.
Programmed in Audience Festival 2009. Premiere in Syracuse (New York) in September 2009 // http://au.dience.org/
Performed as a quadraphonic acousmatic composition at the HK Sand Festival in Para/Site Art Space.
This sound piece comes from the experience of walking at night along the path of the Mac Leose Trail in Sai Kung Country Park, Hong Kong, with stars as the only source of light. Darkness becomes a useful friend to focus on the ambient noises and rhythms. Once one enters the tunnel of leaves and branches onto the concrete path, sounds from the city are left behind and give place to intriguing acousmatic ones coming from different directions. This work is a mixture of field recordings taken along the path from Pak Tam Au to Dailong Wan in Sai Kung Country Park and of synthesis. The piece aims at being a journey into the night, into a dark and mysterious world of unknown and invisible creatures. The sounds of the afternoon’s cicadas and water stream will slowly bring the listener out of the darkness. The main idea for the surround mixing is to have simple and slow movement of sounds in space from the individual stereo tracks, especially back and front. These movements and interactions of the different frequencies of the different tracks not only perturb our idea of the space created by the sounds projected through the speakers but also aimed at recreating the experience of walking. As one walks along a path, sounds are perceived in a different way than by a non-moving listener. So the goal of creating a surround sound mix is to make the sounds interact with each other through space in order to enhance the listening experience. The surround sound factor becomes thus part of the composition.
