/ soundy I / sphere
“Sphere 2018” solo exhibition
Sound and video installation,
2 videos installation, 2 sound sculptures, and 1 mix media.
at S.A.C Art Lab gallery, Chiangmai, TH.
curated by Chol Janepraphaphan
photos by Steve O Dinary.
“Sphere” is like a poetic reflection on relationships, reminiscing about the old days when analog tape recorders captured vibrations as magnetic waves on adjustable tape rims. The exhibition includes two sound sculptures, one circular mixed media piece on the wall, two video installations projected on the wall, and a CRT TV. The first video installation projected on the wall features footage of a fountain in front of the sculpture "The 1946 Communist Revolution in Northern Vietnam" at Hang Dau Park in Hanoi, along with a Vietnamese man walking past the fountain. The second video, displayed on a CRT TV placed in front of the first video's screen showing the white waters of the fountain, depicts a dying bee. The audio from both videos is transmitted to the spherical sound sculpture opposite the video installations. This sound sculpture is constructed from three old telephones mounted on a circular wooden plate. The audiences could listen to the video audio—fountain sounds and the dying bee's sounds—through the telephone receivers.
The circular mixed media piece mounted on another wall consists of tape rims that recorded an hour-long conversation between a couple. These rims are embedded in a circular acrylic plate, encapsulating the audio within the object without amplifying it. Another sound sculpture plays the Thai national anthem on a loop via a tape player, but the playback speed is modified to be so slow that the anthem is unrecognizable, creating an ambient soundscape.
‘Sphere’, the most recent work by Nongyao (2018) was created under the idea of the relationship between space and time: sounds plays the role as a medium among the two, and the magnetic tapes as surface that conceive shocking waves, encapsulating time as the reel turns. Sphere works as physical evidence that could stretch out through time in comparison to the virtual Sphere that is expanding only in specific realm. Nongyao has found a new way to work with magnetic tape players by presenting sounds through different objects in order to react with audience’s recognitive senses. Audiences will be surrounded with the atmosphere of modified music that are stretched and slowed down until the senses are distorted. Some sounds linger with the audiences like ear worms while at the same time they do not recognize any of the melody anymore. Audiences are witnessing the disappearing of one dimension and entering to another.
Text by Chol Janepraphaphan.
info : https://www.facebook.com/events/540546023062760/?active_tab=about
