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Abstract
In-audibility, in-visibility: The dynamics of contemporary cross-cultural identity through sound and installation is a practice-led research project that integrates spatial, sonic and active listening practices with an investigation of contemporary cross-cultural identity. Cultural hybridity and the spectrum of my experiences as a mixed-race Chinese-British-Australian actively apprise my conceptual, and experimental sound and installation practice. This methodology intrinsically links cultural theory with the curated transmission and embodied reception of sonic and visual elements.
In particular, the research began with an investigation of hybridity before moving onto visibility and invisibility, alongside audibility and inaudibility as spectrums of experience, in reference to historical cultural theory as well as a specifically Asian-Australian position. The practice-led research engages light and translucency as mediums to explore the spectrum from invisibility through visibility and into hyper-visibility. Analogously, values of inaudibility, audibility and hyper-audibility are investigated through the application and interrogation of beat frequencies and masking sounds as psychoacoustic sonic phenomena which are inherently hybrid in their construction. Voice, speech and language, in written and spoken forms, are used to bind the sonic and visual elements into a unified hybrid installation.
The installation manifests as a multi-sensory experience of the spectrums of visibility and audibility that immerses the viewer in an approach to contemporary identity that is inherently manifold. Together, the relationship between the spectrums culminates as an embodied, hybrid installation where sonic and visual reception fluctuates. The viewers’ active movement and listening generates an experience of the fluidity and hybridity inherent in contemporary cross-cultural identity.
The practice-led research synthesises sonic and visual materiality with cultural theory to generate an embodied installation where a contemporary Asian-Australian position is exemplified as dynamic and multiplicitous.