Back & Forth

Sound Art (Competition work for Sapporo International Art Festival), 2014

‘Back And Forth’ is an experimental ambience sound for public space. The concept is to create an eligible ambience sound for Sapporo Shiryokan (札幌市資料館). It's challenging for a foreigner who’ve never been to Sapporo to compose, therefore we came out the idea of creating a scenario for a visitor on ‘How to get to Sapporo Shiryokan’ based on the collected information (資料) we could get via Google Map. A back and forth route is created from Point A: Sapporo Station (札幌駅) to the final destination, Point B: Sapporo Shiryokan (札幌市資料館).

The composition of the piece is derived from the coordinate of the traffic light (信号) the visitor will pass by. For instance, the first coordinate of the traffic light (北5西3, 北4西4), ‘北’ is translated into beat, and ‘西’ signifies the note, in other words, every 5 beats (北5), note E (西3) will be played, and next followed by note F (西4) every 4 beats (北4). The piece will end at last traffic light coordination (大通西13, 大通西12) with a different sound, which represents the visitor have reached the destination. Reversed audio is added as ornament, representing the concept of back and forth as well.


Art Direction + Sound Design
Weng Nam Yap, Jimmy Chong



A graphical score created out of google map: