Breathing, 2021
6-channel sound installation, 14’17”, stereo
pure data, computer, audio recorder, Teensy LC, Adafruit temperature sensor, electrical wires, breadboard
Among all the coal towns I have been to in the US, I was particularly attracted by Centralia, a former coal town that is currently a ghost town. By the 1960s, people had left because of its serious underground mine fire in the complex and involuted tunnels of former coal mines. It is said that this fire first started due to a fire at a giant landfill near the entrance of a coal tunnel. The tunnels, as seen from the map, make up an underground kingdom of mine that is about the same size of the town itself.
When the fire got spreaded into the underground kingdom of mine, Centralia’s land was turned into a breathing organ. Underneath it, the mine fires generate warm steams that leak through the cracks and arrive above the ground. When the air travels through the tunnel, the underground network of tunnels make up a giant, pipe-like musical instrument, one that makes sounds from the Earth’s womb.
I built my own modulation system: one that collects sounds from the holes, cracks and underground shafts, and then uses its sensor to modulate the pitch of the sounds according to the thermal readings picked up from the sounds’ own locations. The warmth therefore controls the tone of the sound. Through this “synaesthetic” process, I try to transform the entire underground are into a media that makes sound. The final result I got was a piercing song Centralia sings through its warm inhales and exhales.
Breathing, making process
4’00’’
installation view, 2023
Breathing Underneath, Modern Art Museum, Shanghai, China