2023

Drifting Records

Ice, Concrete, Electronic Components. Site-specific sound installation. This installation comprises two parts, player 59 × 41 × 13 cm; speaker 90 × 23 × 26 cm. The work is recorded as a 4K resolution video with audio using digital camera in Iceland. 























Drifting Records is a site-specific sound installation. Its body resembles a record player, except that it plays pancake ice and speculates on the sound of its forming. Pancake ice forms in cold, moving water. Fragments drift, turn and collide until they become round discs with raised rims. Its formation is like a poem that resists language: no one can point to the moment water becomes ice, or ice becomes water again. Between the two states, sound is the intermediary. Yet the sounds it makes while forming are almost impossible to record. By the time it reaches the shore it has already set into its final shape, and while it is still forming, any microphone close enough to listen would disturb the water that makes them. To document is to destroy.


























Each disc carries the marks of the collisions that shaped it, and the work reads them the way a stylus reads grooves. It does not reconstruct their sound; it speculates. From fragments of the surface, it works back to how the ice might have collided and formed, and turns that process into sound. That sound has never entered any human archive, so any claim to faithful reproduction would be a lie; speculation is the honest form that remains. As the ice melts, the speculation changes, until the ice and its sound are gone.




























The cyclical metamorphosis from water to ice and back again symbolizes the most urgent predicament of our era — the tug-of-war between escalating global temperatures and the intrinsic equilibrium of nature. This is a piece that grants its audience the chance to listen to the relationship between ice and water, it narrates the cycle of dissolution and reformation that ice undergoes. Through this piece, I aim to cultivate a silent yet profound communication, resonating with the audience on an intimate level, linking them to the greater natural world.












































《漂流唱片》是一个特定场地的声音装置，其主体与唱片播放器相似，不同的是它可以用来播放煎饼冰，推演它成形时的声音。煎饼冰形成于寒冷、流动的水中。碎冰漂移、旋转、彼此碰撞，最后长成边缘隆起的圆盘。它的形成像一首无法用语言写下的诗：没有人能指出水在哪一刻成冰，冰又在哪一刻化水。在两种状态的摇摆之间，声音是唯一的中介。然而它成形时的声音几乎无法录下：等它漂到岸边，早已定型；而在形成过程中，任何近到足以听见的麦克风，都会扰动发出声音的水。记录，即破坏。

每一张冰盘都带着塑造它的碰撞留下的痕迹，作品像唱针读取刻槽一样读取它们。它不还原声音，而是推演：从冰面的局部形态出发，倒推冰曾经如何碰撞、成形，再把这个过程变成声音。那段声音从未进入任何人类的档案，任何"忠实再现"都是谎言，推演是剩下的唯一诚实。冰在融化，推演随之改变，直到冰与它的声音一同消失。

唱机的主体是混凝土。混凝土是人造的石头，看似坚固，却并不永恒，它会风化、开裂，被水慢慢侵蚀。两种材料，两种速度，指向同一件事：所有坚固的东西，都只在某个时间尺度上暂时成立。这件作品留下的，是一个真实发生过、却从未被听见的时刻。

技术上，唱针被一枚微型摄像头取代。摄像头实时读取旋转冰面的画面，转为灰度后，以亮度作为高度生成深度图。一个深度学习模型分析这张深度图，推测形成这些形态的碰撞，计算撞击的大小、方向与强度，并据此实时合成冰裂与碰撞的声音。合成所用的素材，是在冰岛湖泊与冰川旁录制的约 500 小时野外录音，主要是水流、冰川断裂和冰块碰撞。声音通过蓝牙从唱机无线传输到扬声器单元的放大器。随着冰逐渐融化，冰盘表面的纹理不断改变，声音也随之变化，直到冰完全消失。





































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