Contemporary Vietnamese artist Phạm Minh Hiếu was recently was commissioned to create an installation for the unveiling of a new art space based in Hanoi called The Outpost. The installation, which runs into 2023, seeks to ‘respect the past of Vietnam, recognise the present, and dream of the future’ by bringing together six Vietnamese contemporary artists of all ages and demographics.
Under the title of The Contemporary, Phạm describes the work as a ‘total installation’ that takes audiences on a journey through the history of artistic expression in his home country, with the audience guided by footsteps of ‘wanderers’, helping them picture the Vietnamese contemporary art landscape.
The installation uses d&b’s Soundscape to bring the sound of these invisible wanderers to life as they roam the installation space, evoking their presence and superimposing their realms onto the physical site of the exhibition.
Born in Hanoi, Phạm is known for his work exploring ‘contemporary conditions’. His art aims to question the concept of temporality in the world and begins with the assumption that art’s ability to investigate the present and make meaning from it can lead to an understanding of a wider culture and society. He does this through ‘total installations,’ where he ‘ponders the complexity of contemporaneity and speculates withdrawn realities’.
‘With traditional sound systems using level panning it would have been impossible to achieve spatialisation so quickly,’ says Ningru (Ning) Guo, Sound Designer for the production. ‘d&b Soundscape is a great system for this purpose since it supports object-based audio and is easy to use for scenarios where audio needs to be moved around the space seamlessly.
In The Contemporary, the sound system is placed in different rooms and we have to send contents across these rooms to trigger much bigger sound events to achieve a tsunami of sound. Soundscape’s visualisation of sound makes it much easier for everyone involved in this project to understand how sound travels from one room to another room and how we can design the sound to interact with the museum visitors.’
By using the En-Scene sound object positioning tool, Phạm could work with the individual placement and movement of up to 64 sound objects. As visitors make their way around the installation, these presences will be heard, not seen, as they are guided through the works and invited to discover their own definition of ‘being contemporary’ and understanding of Vietnamese contemporary art. The installation takes in the entire exhibit space providing an underlying but critical atmospheric element, equally present and absent at the same time.
To add to the ‘total installation’ concept, there are scenarios in which Guo and Phạm planted triggers around the gallery to increase interactivity and engagement. These are able to respond to the various distances and sounds from the visitors with various predetermined sounds designed using Soundscape to transform the gallery experience into a fully immersive one. In this case, the actions of the visitors also result in a consequence that is translated aurally.
‘Because I wanted my wanderers to move very precisely in different directions, only Soundscape would allow me to do that,’ Phạm says. ‘I needed a system that lets me move the sound so the audience can recognize the physicality and movements of the sound sources and follow them. Even though my wanderers are invisible, I want their presences to be vividly signalled through sound, and d&b had the capacity to deliver that.’
Alongside Soundscape, the team also used d&b’s xS-Series loudspeakers. With their unobtrusive design the loudspeakers are suited to a contemporary art space like The Outpost. For flexibility, rotatable horns enable the loudspeakers to be deployed in either orientation, while the cardioid subwoofers deliver low frequencies exactly where needed. This set-up helps the system to hide at the peripheral of the visitors’ attention when they are musing on other artworks, and can easily return to their focus once the sound plays.
This is the first time d&b has worked on an art installation in Vietnam, with this extraordinary exhibition pushing the boundaries of Soundscape: ‘d&b had faith in me as a young creator, and supported my work,’ Phạm says. ‘They believed in my vision and wanted the technology to work with me and for me, rather than me being constrained by its limitations. For me that was incredibly motivating and I look forward to continuing to work with d&b and using Soundscape to explore the horizons of creating immersive experiences for my total installations.’
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