Liangchen Sui

‘Industrial progress has proved much more deadly to life on earth than anyone imagined a century ago.’

— Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

With the relentless development of society and technology, the urban infrastructure construction rate is increasing in speed and scale. Our cities are constantly changing: they are being renovated, repurposed, and rebuilt. Yet, the resulting scattered and numerous signs of physical destruction are very evident on the ground.

As humans continue to challenge the resistance of the earth and ignore the voice of nature, the duality of the relationship between human intervention and the non-human has become an important topic in the contemporary world. Urban traces/scars or restoration (destruction and construction) are formed mainly by human production and life, and may be influenced by the natural environment or the non-human. How will these traces or scars react, feedback and affect humans, other species and nature?

Scars are the Pathétique Symphony of the earth. Their voices are needed to be heard more than ever before.

Music is a world language—its universal symbolism goes beyond language. If the scars of the city are regarded as a linguistic symbol of the earth —a lament of the ground, what kind of commonality do they have with the symbols in music? And, in turn, how do they affect human communication?

City of Scars is a language translation and sound art project undertaken by converting the traces of construction sites to natural language and music notes, letting the audience listen to the cry of the scars of the earth, prompting reflection on the duality of the relationship between humans and non-humans and/or nature. The project aims to poetically explore the possibilities of future language, music and musical notation, breaking down and exploring the boundaries between classical music and instruments.

Through transformation and experimentation, the shapes of the traces are translated into their audio tracks, and thus echo the ‘wailing’ of these scars. Dynamic notes are generated by algorithms and correspond to each musical bar. Are you ready to hear their stories when the scars are opened, and the secrets of their language are revealed?

Movement 1: Monologue of Scars

Let scars speak for themselves; let the humans hear their 'wailing'.

Movement 2: Actions of Human Beings

Combining the sounds of workers (representing the human community transforming the city), who are busy working on construction sites with the sounds of scars, a dialogue is formed with scar music, thus connecting the whole community together.

Sounds are constantly added in layers, creating a continuous and progressive conversation.

Scar language is recorded as an archive, which shows the original appearance of traces in the form of musical scores. It is generated by natural language symbols, which are non-traditional musical notation. 

The uprooted sod, twisted between broken stones and steel, struggled to survive in the cracks of the city's roads, but could not resist the destruction and damage of artificial construction again. After founding it at one of the construction sites, I recorded its life that was dug up and discarded and its self-redemption process with my camera. Then, I captured many non-human objects injured or abandoned on construction sites, so that they also formed a dialogue with scars.

In the sheet music archive, I use semi-transparent paper to express the interaction and influence of scars with humans, surroundings and non-humans, inspiring people to think about the duality of relationships between them.

Scar instruments are generated based on the shapes of the traces, made by resin, hot melt glue, wire and the waste objects I collected around the scars of the construction sites. Some materials are exposed to the surface so that people can use the ‘bow’ to pull and rub each different object material to make different sounds or noises.

Scar instruments not only retain the linguistic information of the traces, but also imitate the principle of physics and the style of violin and keyboard instruments. They are reconstructions of these classical instruments.

After the scars near the construction site were given a voice and after they spoke for themselves, humans could use the scar instruments to respond to the scars. By connecting the contact microphones to the scar instruments, we can hear elements of sound that we would normally not hear. These contact microphones and amplifiers amplify the physical sound of the scar instruments.

I invited some friends to compose and experience an experimental symphony concert, talking to urban scars and improvising new songs with scar instruments.

After the performance, 'scars' were unknowingly left on the body of the instruments, which are permanent and superimposed and easy to be ignored by people. This becomes a metaphor for the subtle and growing destruction of human beings to the surface of the Earth, and conveys some cautionary messages.

The event will be developed into a series of performances. Sounds are added constantly to form a continuous dialogue in different times and spaces.

Eventually, based on more extensive current and future research, the score archives and sounds together to build up a body of knowledge about the Earth for future generations, as a reference for future language patterns.

In Collaboration with:

Performers:

Nan Wang

Jiaqi Meng

Xinghua Wei

Photographer:

Chengyan Sun

Assistant:

Xing Guo

View more details and developments of the project: