
‘Bonner Road’ is a soundscape installation and a spatial music performance exploring the translation of an acoustic environment from one location to another.
Initially, when the Sinchon theatre invited the violinist Sue In Kang and me to create a performance on architecture and sound, we did not anticipate that there was going to be a pandemic. By the end of May, we had to postpone our original proposal and create a new installation that could overcome the physical barrier that has now formed between the UK and Korea.
The idea for Bonner Road was Inspired by the restricted freedom of movement caused by the pandemic. We began to contemplate the most effective ways of creating a sense of telepresence through physical means. We found that sound, as a result of vibration, is the most haptic form of physical energy that can be transmitted over a network.
In the Sinchon theater, we installed six loudspeakers that corresponded to the precise XYZ coordinates of where the sounds were recorded in our studio on Bonner Road. As the audience walked around the marked floor plan, they were able to experience the acoustic atmosphere of our studio in Bonner Road and visualise the movement of the performers by following the sounds’ location in space. After each show, we showed a video of the actual interior of the studio, which gave the audience a chance to see the visual space.
