A Viet Archive

“A Viet Archive” is an artistic exploration of a sound archive created during my concert tour through Vietnam in November and December 2022. A close collaboration with the local scene for experimental music and sound art made it possible to enter into strong personal and artistic exchange with actors of the scene there, and as a result to create a sound archive, which is now the basis for this installation.

This collection of sound recordings, which is spread out in the form of a spatial, virtual soundscape in the atrium of VAZ7 at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (~300 m2), is meant to make my sonic, artistic, human and geographical experiences tangible.

Given is a hybrid situation in which real space is structured with a physically absent soundscape. As a spatialized sound composition is composed of the above-mentioned sound archive, where the sounds are assigned to certain areas in the space and thus can be entered, wandered through and left again.

“Exploring by walking” is the central behavior of the visitors to experience this sound work, whereby physical movement and the covering of paths determines the temporal course of the experience.

The archive consists of field recordings and recordings of concerts as well as recording sessions in collaboration with local artists. It presents itself as a spatial composition and thus as a walkable environment of distributed sounds in space. How these sounds are experienced, results from the individual paths of each person through the spatial composition. Slow and aimless searching and letting oneself be attracted by the upcoming sound bubbles create individual listening experiences for the respective visitors.

This sonically redefined space is entered exclusively with headphones, whereby the recordings themselves behave as sound clouds in the space, overlapping, mixing and complementing each other. The installation cannot be heard without or outside the headphones, but tracking system on each headphone determines the position of each visitor and gives information to the system what sound is individually reproduced for each person’s position.

Based on my sonic experiences on this journey, the work attempts to translate a snapshot of my memory into this spatially accessible sound environment. It stands as an offer for the visitors to participate in this moment or to experience their own impressions.

The sounds within the soundscape are played as loops at their spatial position.
The different file lengths result in loops of different lengths. This means that in the overlapping zones, new mixed sounds are constantly produced. This slight unpredictability provides liveliness and surprises within the composition, however is not chosen randomly, as the overlapping sounds function in every moment of their loop.

Additionally, different file lengths result in loops of different lengths. This means that in the overlapping zones, new mixed sounds are constantly produced. This slight unpredictability provides liveliness and surprises within the composition, however is not chosen randomly, as the overlapping sounds function in every moment of their loop.