Story 08
City Sea Soundscape
Or listen on Soundcloud here
An 11-minute sound piece was developed to accompany the installation of Fragment of a Shoreline at the Padang between 14 Jan and 3 Feb 2022.
The sound piece was produced by Dominic Khoo, also known as OFTRT, who is a Singapore-based electronic music producer and sound artist.
The piece recharacterises sea waves as electronic pulses, echoes and digital chatter. Mimicking the rhythm and turbulence of unpredictable waves in open waters, the piece leads listeners across a landscape of varying depths, patterns and intensities.
The piece eludes a typical imitative representation of sea sounds. Instead, the piece deepens the psychogeographical effect of the Fragment by substituting the audio experience with digital sounds, the ambiguity of the site’s history is left malleable to the listener’s own relation to the site.
Generated by recording electromagnetic waves from power outlets and devices, the sound piece illustrates the invisible interactions between the past and evolving present, witnessed only by the protected site of the Padang. The piece gives audio form to perhaps just one strand of the myriad stories buried beneath this charged site.