The Cacophonic Orchestra
2020
multi-channel video
03:44

The speakers filmed individually are placed in an orchestral arrangement. The speakers represent 15 different musical instruments.

I recorded human voices through virtual interviews and transformed them into octaves, so the voices remain as vibrations. The vibrations are transferred onto water with sonic waves. Viewers see the timbre or rhythm of the voices without the actual voices being heard. 

Symphony No.1

The musical scores are created by the actual voices. All voices have their own distinctive musical scores according to different tones, timbres, and tempos of the voices. The low tone of voices have F clef and high tone of voices have G clef. All of the musical scores were then compiled into a book entitled the Cacophonic Orchestra: Symphony 1.  

Digital Publication link here

During the lockdown, I tried to communicate with some people on Skype or FaceTime. I asked them to talk about their most recent personal events. I had expected they would say something related to Covid-19. This is because Covid-19 has been the biggest issue, and I did not think there would be a more important issue. However, all the answers were different. What they wanted to share with me was a dream, a nightmare, her crush on a guy, a worry about his girlfriend, a problem about a job or a friend, and also a fear of the messy situation at the beginning of the lockdown which are personal, private, and trivial in some ways.

Now we are in the same global pandemic situation, so in a macro view, we seem to live in a homogenous way, staying at home, doing home activities, studying\ working online with a focused concern on the coronavirus. In a micro view, however, we actually all have different/personal/individual lifestyles, interests and worries.