Approaching the Unnameable Sound
Chaotic Set
2025
Field recordings, participatory drawing, printed matter, performance and video
BA graduation project
Supervisor: Wang Yuanbo
Field recordings, participatory drawing, printed matter, performance and video
BA graduation project
Supervisor: Wang Yuanbo
We rarely talk about sound except in words, and words usually lose it. Chaotic Set begins with short recordings from ordinary places- a basketball court, a lakeside on campus, a small town, a hotel room, a student dormitory and asks what happens when people try to hold on to a sound without naming it.
In the first experiment, participants listened to one-second clips and answered in text and abstract marks. Based on the relationships between their symbols and the sounds, they built a small grammar dictionary. Longer recordings of two to three minutes were then translated into continuous visual scores. In the last experiment, performers read those scores with their bodies, clapping, stamping and moving, turning the drawings back into sound.
Each translation adds something and loses something. Instead of arriving at one correct description, the collection of responses grows into a set: hundreds of folded strips, scores and gestures that do not agree with each other. The more elements it holds, the harder the sound is to name, and the closer it feels. The project is exhibited as an installation of printed matter, scores and video, and is both an artistic practice and an inquiry into how sound and meaning relate.
Experiment 1
A: Words ⁀ B: Shapes
Seventeen participants took part in Part A (words) and Part B (shapes). Each listened to eleven one-second recordings and described what they heard in words and in shapes.
It seemed that the harder we tried to describe a sound precisely, the vaguer the result became.
It seemed that the harder we tried to describe a sound precisely, the vaguer the result became.
Once again I felt that sound cannot be reduced, simplified or accurately named. Yet as the set grew, my understanding of the sound deepened, moving from a single, precise understanding to one that is chaotic and concrete.
Experiment 2
C: Grammar
Participants then listened to five longer recordings of two to three minutes each, notating the sound continuously with graphic symbols on long strips of paper as they listened.
Compared with the short clips, the longer recordings reveal more fully how a sound changes over time, capturing its rhythms and direction.
Compared with the short clips, the longer recordings reveal more fully how a sound changes over time, capturing its rhythms and direction.
Experiment 3
D: Re-embodiment
1. Reading directly from the score, performers made body movements matching the rhythm of the graphic marks.
2. Performers made sound by clapping, stamping and striking parts of their bodies, expressing the rhythm and mood of the score.
3. Performers improvised the emotional and psychological responses that arose as they looked at the visual score.
4. Performers improvised with meaningless vocal sounds such as "ah" and "woo", intuitively voicing the rhythms and shifts of feeling in the visual score.
2. Performers made sound by clapping, stamping and striking parts of their bodies, expressing the rhythm and mood of the score.
3. Performers improvised the emotional and psychological responses that arose as they looked at the visual score.
4. Performers improvised with meaningless vocal sounds such as "ah" and "woo", intuitively voicing the rhythms and shifts of feeling in the visual score.
credit:
Xueer Xu @alexstewart.000000012024