life in text and stereo sound
some collections are about intimacy of conversation and shared viewing. boston’s gardner museum is this sort of place; not only is it best to go with a friend to enjoy Continue Reading →
i’ve been working on the sound installation piece “o tfon itira” a bit more recently, making a trip back up to makota’ay to record inside the moon cave. the piece Continue Reading →
>ironically, ciRahic’s project to recover the ability to read the ocean’s writing relies not upon natural materials, but on flip flops, the refuse of an industrial society that displaced an ‘amis understanding of the ocean as animate, vibrant, and life giving. nearly daily, ciRahic visits the ocean to observe and gather flip flops either discarded on the beach or elsewhere, which somehow come to rest on the beach. visiting sites along taiwan’s entire east coast, he stops when he has found a flip flop and begins to observe his surroundings, creating a narrative for what he has found. for example, the flip flop could be faded, showing the signs of a long journey; he may ask, how long did you float before you arrived here? do you miss your home? Continue Reading →
on taiwan, a definition of the street as a place for vehicular traffic has not displaced other possibilities, in which the street serves as a medium of display, leisure, performance, or commerce. while taiwanese religious processions express these possibilities of street life most flamboyantly, more humble conveyances of street life give to the street its quotidian values. Continue Reading →
although anthropologists would not generally confuse ethnography with documentary presentation, such a definition guides most sound work in the discipline. to broaden definitions of ethnographic sound work, i have been exploring what one could call a conceptual soundscape: rather than aiming for verisimilitude, these pieces create fantastic or impossible sounds that nonetheless explore an historically specific way of hearing Continue Reading →
