This project involves the contributions of Mr. Chan Sheung Fung, Mr. Tse Man Ki, and Mr. Wong Yiu Sing for documentation, graphic design, and equipment preparation—special thanks for their hard work.
What is ~Pandemic~ Chaos ?
After three years of the pandemic, Hong Kong citizens can finally rest and breathe fresh air without masks in public at the expense of living hard and inconvenienced at those times. This interactive sound installation is going to stimulate our audiences and make them reflect on the time of the pandemic. Besides, we would like to experiment with them by creating unexpected results and collecting their reactions to these “sensitive” sounds, such as spraying and coughing. What will they do or feel?
Location of the Sound Installation
The interior area of the 2/F in Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre. The location has a square for walking. Providing different sound effects with main background music could increase interactivity.
How does ~Pandemic~ Chaos work?
This installation includes three pieces of music played by three main speakers and a list of sound effects played by portable devices. All the music has been uploaded to the link below.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hrI8VH3XH_xlF4e6ZFQRa9grSGke2xk2?usp=share_link
Composition of Background Music and Sound Effects
The first piece of music focuses on using masks and people’s unawareness of the pandemic. The music used audio clips from news and press conferences to inform the audience about the first year’s pandemic. Low frequencies are used to create invisible pressure about the pandemic. We intentionally made extreme contrasts in the dynamics to create pressure.
The second main music focuses on vaccinations and the LeaveHomeSafe mobile application. The keywords “vaccination” and “LeaveHomeSafe” are repeated throughout the music. Since the second speaker is placed in a relatively closed area, we repeat the melody and keywords to make the music around the audience to illustrate that the pandemic is all around us. Percussion instruments are used from the middle to the end of the music to create tension about the increasing concern about the pandemic. The music ends at the climax, illustrating that the pandemic is not over.
The third music piece concentrates on the cancellation of different covid prevention policies. Instead of using different instruments and audio clips, we create a relaxed feeling in the third music using a simple string melody and a single audio clip.
For the sound effects provided to the audience to play with, we collect the sounds that we usually hear in our daily lives during the pandemic, such as coughing and sneezing, to add more variation to the installation.
