Stepping inside Waley Art (水谷藝術) in Taipei’s historic Wanhua District (萬華區) one leaves the motorcycle growl and air-conditioner purr of the street and enters a very different sonic realm.
Speakers hiss, machines whir and objects chime from all five floors of the shophouse-turned- contemporary art gallery (including the basement).
“It’s a bit of a metaphor, the stacking of gallery floors is like the layering of sounds,” observes Australian conceptual artist Samuel Beilby, whose audio installation HZ & Machinic Paragenesis occupies the ground floor of the gallery space.
Photo courtesy of Samuel Beilby
He’s not wrong.
Put ‘em in a Box (我們把它都裝在一個盒子裡), which runs until Aug. 18, invites gallery-goers to “think outside the box” with an eclectic array of multi-media installations that explore human relationships with sound.
This brain-expanding exhibition is the brainchild of curator Shih Ya-tien (施雅恬), from Tainan, who says it took her a full year to put the whole project together.
Photo: Thomas Bird, Taipei Times
“The artists are all from different cities, from Helsinki to Perth, but we are all very interested in using sound as the material to make our work,” she says. “We’ve been sharing recordings on a Google Drive.”
Shih says she chose Waley Art to bring her disparate band of sound sculptors together because it’s one of Taipei’s “more experimental spaces” that “welcomes all kinds of novel experiences.”
SCULPTORS OF SOUND
Photo courtesy of Waley Art
Shih says she views cities as “vast containers, encompassing the chirps of birds, barks of dogs,” as well as “the noises of traffic and construction sites.”
Humans have invented devices for the production and reproduction of sound and these devices “act as containers, which facilitate the reception and circulation of intricate, mundane secrets.”
These so-called “containers” are the focus of the exhibition.
Photo courtesy of Waley Art
The talents of five artists, Chi Po-hao (紀柏豪), Chloe Lin (林雨儂), Sarah Song (宋夏然), Samuel Beilby and Elico Suzuki are employed to investigate sound through their respective creative practices.
The results are as varied as they are unique.
“I went to three automated warehouses in Taiwan,” explains Beilby, “and recorded the electromagnetic frequencies on some microphones, ethereal sounds that you can’t ordinarily hear.”
Photo: Thomas Bird, Taipei Times
The robotic noises he captured can be listened to via headphones stationed on the gallery wall next to physical representations of the sounds.
“The sculptures are generated from audio. And the maps map-out my methodology — where I went to grab invisible sounds.”
On the second floor, Tokyo-based sound artist Elico Suzuki has created a startling array of self-made instruments exploring ecological and social themes.
Photo: Thomas Bird, Taipei Times
These include the mixed media object For The Birds whereby a small monitor is attached to a toy piano by a home-made circuit.
Each time a bird takes flight on the monitor screen, it triggers a sensor, which plays a note on the piano.
On the fourth floor, there’s a giant, transparent ball called We Made Sound in a Box (我們在盒子裡發聲音), which amplifies exclamations like “aha.”
It is the creation of Taipei-based creative Chloe Lin who began her sonic journey as a student of classical music at National Taiwan Normal University.
“My instrument is the pipa,” she says of the pear-shaped string-instrument sometimes referred to as a Chinese lute.
Lin started to experiment with improvisation and dance while in Taipei but it wasn’t until she enrolled in a Master’s degree program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago that she says her audio palette broadened to incorporate different sound textures and approaches.
The result is a visually and audibly arresting creation.
“I collected all different kinds of meaningless sounds from different languages, Japanese, Chinese and English, male or female. I even got AI to mimic a human voice.”
She says that people use sound to express an emotion or momentary feeling. It was these “pure notes” that she collected to make her composition.
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