The sound installation titled “Terminals-Combined” features the urban sounds in Hong Kong and Turku.
The two cities have historical seaports and terminals with wide variety of sounds related to logistic activities.
When the world-class terminals are their common features, the differences in population density and architecture suggest contrasting acoustic context in their urban lives.

The starting point of the project was outdoor recording trips during the hot summer (Hong Kong) and cold winter (Turku).
I located some unique sound sources in the cities, including the bird street in Hong Kong and the bells of the ancient Turku Church. I also collected sounds related to urban lives such as rapid transit, ferries and buses, and merged the two cities according to their original acoustic context. The goal is to deliver audio illusions between Hong Kong and Turku, and to discover the under-audited sounds in their urban landscapes.

In its sound projection, a self-built ambisonics application based on ICST ambisonics tools was employed to create an ambisonic soundfield.
The audience can immerse themselves in the sounds when they are at the centre of the studio.

As an audio-visual stimulation, the installation is accompanied by a photo slideshow illustrating some recording spots in Hong Kong and Turku.
All the photos were taken during the recording trips, reflecting the time and place of the recording activities.

Biography

Born in 1980 Hong Kong, Ka-ho Cheung composes electro-acoustic music and music for theatre. He carried out sampling projects for endangered musical instruments and produced recordings for live concerts in different countries. Indoor recording projects include concert recordings in Thailand Composition Festival in 2006 and 2007. Recently he made environmental recordings for urban rails in Hong Kong, Berlin, London and Stockholm.

Completed his master degree in music composition at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, U.S.A., currently he is a research student in Manchester, U.K. He received prize and mention in Musica Nova 2002 in Prague and Luigi Russolo 2003 in Italy, composer-in-residence in Elektronisches Studio Technische Universität Berlin during 2007 and artist-in-residence for a new media project at Gallery Titanik in Turku, Finland in 2008.

Their seaports are deep enough
to welcome huge cargo ships and
cruises. Tons and tons of goods
leave the ports everyday, people
are busy for everything, trains
and lorries keep running.
Stay for a while and listen, we
might hear something interesting
between the two cities…





Sampling at Aberdeen, Hong Kong

Kaho Cheung
(Hong Kong / UK)


The project is a sound
installation featuring the
sounds of Turku and Hong Kong.
Both bilingual cities under
foreign influences, Turku is a
logistic hub in Scandinavia. It
was the gate to the West in the
old days. Hong Kong is a logistic
hub in Far-east Asia, in the past
it was also the gate to the West.




Sampling along Aura River, Turku




Lai King Station,
Mass Transit
Railway,
Hong Kong

The installation includes sounds
from logistic infrastructures such as
terminal ports, harbours, railways,
buses, ferries, urban rails, and from
public places such as shopping
malls and fresh food markets.
Presented under slight abstraction,
this project aims at bridging the
distanced soundscapes.

This project is
supported by: