-> At the Door

Soundwalk, 2021

Tools: Field recorder & microphones, Reaper, HTML/css/Javascript, Github, Adobe Illustrator, Photography

https://yb924.github.io/AtTheDoor/ (Phone access is suggested.)


Details:


"At the door: A Shanghai Lilong Soundwalk" offers a 360-degree acoustic exploration that captures the fluid dynamics of Shanghai's lilong neighborhoods. Over the course of 30-minute, the piece seamlessly intertwines the past with the present, the near and the far by weaving together lilong soundscape in various locations in Shanghai, and four sets of interviewees’ narrative of diversed living experience in lilong compound from 1960s to 2021. This sonic journey serves as a captivating and poetic documentation of Shanghai's lilong, inviting its audience to experience the memories woven into these historic neighborhoods through the medium of sound. The piece is originally mapped onto an abandoned lilong space near Laoximen Station in Shanghai.


Interviews and soundscape of lilongs are edited into five sections, which are then carefully mapped on to the walking site near Laoximen subway station, exit 6, Shanghai. The whole experience is around 32  minutes in total.

Exhibition

A 30 minute edited soundtrack version is commissioned by Maison Margiela as part of the project “The Memory of ... Streets”, 2024




Writing 

It is five o’clock in the afternoon, you are standing in a traditional Shanghai lilong. The elementary school just got released, children are rushing out of the gate, laughing and running. The front door is open, and a man is cooking by the door in the alley, making a “Thwack” sound occasionally. Right across the narrow lane in between the two lines of lilong dwellings, three old men are chatting in Shanghainese. Next to the old men, a housewife is watering her flowers. The women in the house nearby are playing Mahjong excitedly. The television sound can be heard quite clearly even though it comes from the bedroom on the second floor. A bicycle passes by with its bell ringing for attention...

The soundscape in a lilong compound is complicated and fascinating. You may notice the existence of both the sound you will hear in a public space and the sound you will only hear when being in someone’s personal house. Intimacy is the main theme when talking about sound in a Shanghai lilong.Hearing and being heard by neighbors is everyday life in a Shanghai lilong no matter how the dwellers like it. The personal activities like laundry or cookin conducted outdoors contributes to the soundscape of the environment. Even during the night, when activities no longer take place in the communal alleys and the front doors are shut down, the snoring of your neighbors’ finds its way to your ears. As a result, the li compound is alway somewhere between private and public.

Sense of “self” and “others” is strengthened at the front doors of Shanghai lilongs where activities in both private and public space can be heard most clearly. Meal times are the liveliest when the whole li compound sounds like a dancing party of pots and pans. Late evening is the best time to have a long chat with neighbors for the retired, while after dinner time is perfect for walking dogs and laundry. Sound of intimacy repeatedly reminds the dwellers of others presence and their presence to others. Hearing, instead of vision, is the most efficient sense to catch this kind of uniqueness and learn about this space. 

The Shanghai lilong is a never-ending piece of music as people walk in the lanes with ope ears. It is a layered composition of the sound of people snoring, cooking and chatting, the shout of the children, the sound of playing chess, and the sound of washing dishes and sweeping the floor, and etc. John Luther Adams wrote in a note to listeners of Soundwalk 9:09, “We discove much more detail than we might imagine—innumerable small sounds and unexpected pools of stillness. At times, we can almost hear the city breathing.” The breaths of Shanghai lilong lies in the sonic environment, of the architecture, of the daily routine of its inhabitants, and of the relationship of “public” and “private”.

This project proposes an important value of documenting Shanghai lilongs through sound to capture their unique features. It aims to document the current situation and the “public” and “private” concepts that manifest themselves in this special environment. It is not a generalizatio of the complicated term of “lilong”, but rather a new perspective to look at the place. R. Murray Schafer, the author of The Turning of the World concerning acoustic ecology, once said in his video “Listen” that "The world is a huge musical composition that is going on all the time without a beginning and an ending, we are the composer of the huge composition... Without recording, every sound commit suicide and would never be heard again in exactly the sam way." Visual documentation has long been the dominant way to record current moments, while the value of sound documentation is often neglected. At the Front Door will serve as a poetic reflection of the current moment of Shanghai lilong, a perspective to look at the place, and hopefully, a valuable audio memory of Shanghai lilong life in the future.