weaving cityscapes and sound, bangkok design week
By Sonic Jeel
2023Featured in Bangkok Design Week, 'Urban-nice-zation,' investigates Bangkok’s cityscape with the intent to weave together a multiplicity of sights and sounds that begin to codify a unique cultural environment. The project examines daily behaviors, patterns, and constructed environments that are often overlooked but play a vital role in the identity of a community. The result is an interpretation of Bangkok using a series of micro-light boards overlaid with fabric to dynamically play graphic patterns and sounds. This project is both a playful decoding of everyday life, and a form of cultural preservation by transcribing the pedestrian moments of the city that are slowly disappearing due to urbanization.
The sound is designed using four separate stereo track. The four tracks play simultaneously using systematic structures allowing certain sounds to be more present while others are pushed to the background. Overtime, the sounds slowly move in and out of sync allowing for many variations and new compositions to emerge. The intent is to replicate how sounds in the Bangkok urban environment oscillate between calm and chaotic.
Collaborators: Pornprapha Phatanateacha (Mixing Methods), Levi Hammett (xLabs), Naima Almajdobah (MFA Student)