SOUND FORMS: May 16 - June 2
Opening reception: May 16, 5:30 to 8:30 pm

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Next Wednesday, May 16, we’re very excited to welcome Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong (CMHK) to Centre A for the presentation of a selected program from the Sound Forms festival, featuring works composed by Hildegard Westerkamp, Larry Shuen, Alex Yiu, Barry Truax, Remy Siu & Russell Wallace, and Vanissa Law. CMHK Artistic Director and Sound Forms curator Samson Young will be in attendance. Held last month by CMHK and Hong Kong Art Centre, Sound Forms was the first festival in Hong Kong to focus on multi-channel sound.

The program consists of 2 new commissions and 1 newly remixed piece by 3 Hong Kong composers, as well as 3 pieces by Canadian composers. The selected pieces fall under 3 themes: soundscape compositions based on field recordings; beatbox, rap, and rhymes made by electronically fragmented vocal patterns and heavily processed speech, which trace tenuous lines in space; and experimental additive synthesis changing the timbre of sound in a multi-channel setting.

Sound Forms is born out of the conviction that one of the most important features of auditory experience is its capacity to reconfigure space: the ephemeral destabilizes rigid structures. It aims to use focused listening to rekindle an ancient understanding of sound as colliding masses, as projection of carrying speeds and infinitely trans-muting forms; in turn, we might reimagine space as fluid, living, and resourcefully voluminous.

Sound Forms hopes to rekindle an ancient understanding of sound as colliding masses, as the projection of carrying speeds and infinitely transmuting forms; through focused listening, we might reimagine space as fluid, living, and voluminous.