This playlist features excerpts from field recordings made at the Wetland and Eastern Sarus Crane Learning Center (Buri Ram, Thailand) by Mr Nattawat Paewkratoke, Assistant Researcher at the Conservation and Research The Zoological Park Organization of Thailand.

I am currently developed a sound composition and installation titled REDDER, based on these recordings of these birds. This work is commissioned by and will be presented at the Thailand Biennale, Korat in December 2021.

Eastern Sarus Crane Soundscape (excerpt D)

Eastern Sarus Crane Soundscape (excerpt C)

Eastern Sarus Crane Soundscape (excerpt B)

This playlist features excerpts from field recordings made at the Wetland and Eastern Sarus Crane Learning Center (Buri Ram, Thailand) by Mr Nattawat Paewkratoke, Assistant Researcher at the Conservation and Research The Zoological Park Organization of Thailand.

These recordings feature in my sound installation Redder, a new work commissioned and presented at the Thailand Biennale, Korat, 2021.

Eastern Sarus Crane Soundscape (excerpt A)

I participated in Animistic Apparatus in April 2019, a three-day film lab initiated by May Adadol Ingawanij, that took place Udon Thani, Thailand. We worked with a local itinerant projection troupe who set up screens, projectors and sound systems from bygone eras as a canvas to explore cross-disciplinary and collaborative modes of re-imagining cinematic practise through a animistic lens: What is cinema, if the screen becomes a gateway to immaterial worlds; a means of dissolving the membrane between the material body and spirit, the living and dead, the human and nonhuman?

This short audio piece features an excerpt from an interview with Jum, caretaker of Jao Phu Nong Jok, an animist shrine we visited during the lab. He tells a story about someone who made an offerings to the site in the form of a film screening. This particular film was a fiction which didn’t bode well with the shrine spirit who resided there, taking it to be the performance of a lie. Halfway through the film the screen caught fire.

I responded to this story by re-working recordings of live improv sessions I did using my field recordings and instruments created by the artist & musician Tarek Atoui. This is my initial effort in feeling my way through the space that Jum's stories opened up for me, via sound.

If we can think of the cinema screen as a door between human and nonhuman worlds, what role might sound play in mediating its opening?

Sound shapes the perceptual and affectual realities we experience, and in relation to the cinematic image it can transform its sensuous horizon in many potential directions. If we see the dance between sound and image as an act of revealing a certain phenomenological fluidity in our experiential reality, then we might consider listening as a means of attuning to these possible worlds that we can inhabit. This audio-visual choreography and process of attunement becomes a gesture of holding open space for alternative modes of perception and affect, and thus contains a potentiality to the bridge the gap between beings and between worlds.

Jao Phu Nong Jok Shrine (Part 2, excerpt)

This recording, along with others that share the same image, were captured during my Sacred Soundscapes project (2010).

If you're interested to find out more about it, please visit:

sacredsoundscapes.wordpress.com/


Pulau Ubin, Singapore - Lyrical Bird & Lonesome Frog excerpt (Mar 2011)

Pulau Ubin, Singapore - Frogs Mating

Portsdown, Singapore - Old Railway

Dover, Singapore - Temple Opera

China Town Hawker, Singapore - Sugar Cane Juicer

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Singapore - Stream

6 layered hydrophone recordings, played back over a 6-channel surround set up in an old boat house. Recorded in stereo.


Changi Point, Singapore - Hydrophone Test (Surround)

Potong Pasir MRT bus stop, Singapore - Myna Birds excerpt (Mar 2010)

A piece composed with a series of improvisations using turntable, prepared vinyl, field recordings on cassette tape, contact mics with various implements, and fragments of half-awake speech; recalling my dreams upon waking.

This piece forms half of a sound sculpture created in response to my dreams, which I've been documenting over the last few years in the form of writing, drawing and voice recordings.

Through the Mind's Eye of a Needle - excerpt (2011)

An excerpt from an improvised live set by Amino Acid Orchestra (Zai Kuning, Shark Fung, Fuzz Lee, Zai Tang) with Bani Haikal and Angie Seah.

We had a great time playing for everyone that came!





AAO + Bani Haikal + Angie Seah - Live @ Night & Day, Singapore (5th July 2011)

This sound was one of many that made up the aural element of lll Movement, a temporary installation created where the old National Library of Singapore used to stand. 

This site‐specific installation was a collaboration between Tang Ling Nah, atelier | small and myself. The work explored the cycle of construction, deconstruction and renewal within the city and was comprised of three zones―remembering, contemplating and transforming―reminiscent of three movements in a single musical composition. Sound recordings from the urban environment are transformed and fused with architectural elements made from construction waste to create a distinct aural‐spatial experience. The work encouraged the public to slow down, stop and contemplate the perpetual cycle of urban transformation through the act of listening. It was 1 of 7 proposals to be chosen for Hub-to-Hub Singapore, 2011.

Read more about the work here:

www.lllmovement.blogspot.com

Contemplating - Pulsing Bird at Dusk

Remembering - Reference Section

Contemplating - Vanished Kampong

Sacred Soundscapes - CD excerpt (Apr 2010)

This is a montage of sound & music material created for Brodal Serei, a contemporary dance work about Khmer boxing by Emmanuèle Phuon and Amrita Performing Arts.

The work showed at Esplanade's da:ns festival, Singapore, on 22nd and 23rd October 2016.

Brodal Serei(Freestyle Boxing) - Sound Design & Composition Montage

An experiment using 24 images of our Sun rotating as source material. 

First, I cropped these images and stitched them all into a single long image in Photoshop. Next, I placed this image in Photosounder, which reads the image as time (on the x axis) and frequency / pitch (on the y axis) according to brightness. In other words, where light is most present within the image, certain frequencies will be more pronounced and where it is darker less so. 

Effectively this image sequence of the Sun's surface becomes a kind of visual score which can be interpreted as audio within Photosounder; as the playhead moves across the image, the chaotic swirls of light and vibrant textures of plasma become painterly gestures, translated into an ethereal sonic vibrations.

A Sketch for "Veiling"

I am working on a composition which explores the mentality behind British imperialism, through the use of songs and architecture created during the colonial period.

I have used a public domain recording from 1930 of Land of Hope and Glory (originally created in 1902), composed by Edward Elgar with lyrics by A.C Benson and sung by Clara Butt.

In the excerpt you hear each line of the chorus played back in isolation within the tympanum of the former Supreme Court, Singapore. Due to the voluminous interior structure, each interval provides a chance to hear the acoustic character of the dome, as articulated through the reverb tails of the song.

The lyrics, now transformed by the monumental acoustics of the space, begin to speak to me about the grandiosity of the imperial psyche. In turn, the lingering reflections hint towards the lasting effects of colonialism, echoing the notion that the British Empire cast a long shadow. 

As I work on this piece further I will experiment with ways of bringing out these themes through the material re-recorded in the tympanum.

~

Here are the full lyrics to Land of Hope and Glory:

Dear Land of Hope, thy hope is crowned,
God make thee mightier yet!	
On Sov'ran brows, beloved, renowned,
Once more thy crown is set.
Thine equal laws, by Freedom gained,
Have ruled thee well and long;
By Freedom gained, by Truth maintained,
Thine Empire shall be strong.
 
Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet,
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.  

Thy fame is ancient as the days,
As Ocean large and wide:
A pride that dares, and heeds not praise,
A stern and silent pride;
Not that false joy that dreams content
With what our sires have won;
The blood a hero sire hath spent
Still nerves a hero son.

Land of Hope and Glory (excerpt) @ The Former Supreme Court Tympanum, Singapore

Acoustic recording of my installation work Spectres, which was commissioned by Singapore International Festival of the Arts 2017 for The O.P.E.N.

All the sounds and images within the work were derived from my field recordings of Singapore's natural environments.

Spectres (excerpt) @ The O.P.E.N, SIFA 2017

This excerpt is a recent recording of the dubplate record containing my composition of field recordings from Bukit Brown Cemetery, made in 2013. After 6 years and an estimated 1000+ plays, the soundscape pressed upon its surface has increasingly been inhabited by the crackle, clicks and turbulent textures of the medium. I wonder how it will sound after another 6 years has passed?

Respect IV (Bukit Brown Cemetery I), Dubplate excerpt (mono)

Above is an excerpt from the 12 minute piece of music I wrote for Kuik Swee Boon's Unform, one of three works that featured in Solo / Duet at NUS Arts Festival 2013. Kuik worked closely with dance-artists Sherry Tay, Lee Mun Wai and Jessica Christina to choreograph a dynamic piece of contemporary dance that brought the audience in to the interior world of the dance-artists, revealing their individual journeys and the burning questions they have as artist in relation to wider society.

There were three pieces of music within Unform, each helping to create a window into the personal narratives explored by each dance-artist; Lamb's Cotton Wool for Mun Wai, Fun's Some Nights for Sherry, and the third would be my take on an Indonesian folk song entitled Sing Sing So:

Swee Boon gave me an open brief of freely reimagining Sing Sing So as an electronic dance music composition, bringing its relevance as a old song from Jessica's homeland into the present. The intention was not to create a nostalgic link to the past, but rather to use the act of reinterpreting the piece as a metaphor for Jessica's journey from her point of origin to establishing herself as contemporary dance-artist based in Singapore; the process of becoming.

A sing sing so….
O boat & wind
Please bring me to my
Maternal uncle's house
To meet my soul mate who is
Bethrothed to me
My heart do not be sad
If she has yet to exist
Your luck will brighten
As bright as the sun
When the time comes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YrQgZhFkVTw

Read more about the process and thinking behind this work here:

http://fluidterrain.blogspot.sg/2013/05/unform-collaboration-with-dance-company.html

Unform [excerpt] - Collaboration with Kuik Swee Boon

Zai Tang is an artist, composer and sound designer based in Singapore. Drawing influence from acoustic ecology, phenomenology and electronic & experimental music, his practice is built upon a belief that listening is an invaluable means of attuning to and forming deeper relationships with the worlds we inhabit.

In his solo work, he asks the question: What does it mean to listen to nature in a time of ecological crisis? In response, he experiments with the transformation and visualisation of wildlife field recordings from habitats under threat. The resulting material is used to create immersive listening experiences that imagine new ways to relate to more-than-human life.

Recent presentations include Mali Bucha: Dance Offering at Freespace Dance 2024, Hong Kong with Kornkarn Rungsawang; Wild Soma at Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2024); No. 60 at Hong Kong Arts Festival (2024) with Pichet Klunchun Dance Company; Sonic Medi(a)tions at National Gallery Singapore (2023); Talking Leaves at 59th Venice Biennale (2022) with Shubigi Rao; Escape Velocity V (Solo Version) at Seoul Mediacity Pre-Biennale (2022); Redder at the Thailand Biennale, Korat (2021).

ZaiTang

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