Traffic
A silent video installation about sound [2010]
In the winter of 2009, I went to Hanoi to capture field recordings for a composition entitled 'Intersection'. I also took many photographs in and around the city. Intersection is a silent visual installation, using images that suggests the sound and rhythm of Hanoi in 2009. I also took a lot of photos in and around Hanoi. These photos illustrate the hectic noise of the daily city life, but there are also long time exposures taken at night, shots taken in nature or details, that tell a different story; a more introverted, more quiet Vietnam.
These images illustrate the hectic noise of daily urban life, but they also include long-exposure night shots, images taken in nature, and close-up details that tell a different story of a more introverted, quieter Vietnam.
The ambient sounds I experienced in Hanoi closely match what the images suggest: traffic noise, cars, trains, motorcycles, bicycles, church bells, construction sites, electrical hums, as well as more distant steady states, drones, and sounds that slowly transform over time.
In the installation, three video displays show slowly fading and overlapping photographic images. The fading is not a simple dissolve but a complex keying process: parts of the images appear and disappear at different times depending on their color and brightness, resulting in strange, contradictory, dream-like overlays.
The sequence of images is not fixed but based on probabilities, and the software generating the sequence runs independently on each display. As a result, the installation never repeats itself, and each moment offers a new and unseen combination of elements.
Traffic was exhibited from July 18, 2010, to August 29, 2010, as part of the group exhibition Klang im Namen des Raumes at Strausberger Platz, Berlin.
The image-processing software I wrote for Traffic, along with the visual aesthetic of dismantled TFT computer displays, later became the basis for the installation Transition Machine, exhibited in 2011 at Färgfabriken, Stockholm, and for the high-res print graphics series Landscape (2014).
