PAM Interview | Technological Mediation,City & Sound#时尚#The#Art#and#Braud#Museum

The exhibition "Sonic City"opened on May 31, 2025, and is currently on view on the 4th floor of Pingshan Art Museum. Returning to the fundamental theme of "sound" and "city," the exhibition delves into the complex meanings of urban soundscapes, prompting deep reflections on time, space, and human memory. Curated by Luo Jing, a curator at Pingshan Art Museum, the project was selected for the "2024–2025 Guangdong Museum of Art Young Curators Support Program".

As a museum-initiated project, Sonic City brings together seven artists and collectives working in sound and new media art. Through sound—an invisible yet essential medium—the exhibition invites audiences to rediscover the city through attentive listening and critical engagement. It reminds us that the city is not only something we see, but also something we hear.

This interview features participating artists Marcel Zaes Sagesser,Tristan Braud,Gyuwon Sylvia Lee, and Wu Zhen(Yoyo), and was conducted by curator Luo Jing. The text has been reviewed and approved by the interviewees prior to publication.

Artist Group

Marcel Zaes Sagesseris an artist and researcher in sound, digital media and music creation. He is currently an assistant professor at the School of Creative Design, Southern University of Science and Technology. He received a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Music Composition from Brown University. His work focuses on the multiple relationships between humans and sound technology, and how sound is embedded in wider sociocultural systems.

Tristan Braud(Dr. Tristan Braud) is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Integrative Systems and Design at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) where he leads the Extended Reality and Immersive Media Lab (XRIM Lab) at HKUST. His research explores the intersection between pervasive computing, and human-centered systems design, with a focus on augmented and virtual reality as a medium. In addition to his academic research, Dr. Braud actively explores the intersection between technology and artistic expression through several projects that integrate augmented and virtual reality into artworks and performances.

Gyuwon Sylvia Lee is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher investigating how technology reshapes identity, relationships, and space. Through site-specific performances and kinetic sculptures incorporating creative coding, physical computing, and generative AI, she explores how urban life influences both individuals and communities.Her experiments with light, motion, and sound reveal the integration of physical and digital environments by awakening sensory and spatial awareness. Her practice critiques how technology mediates our relationship with urban and natural spaces, exposing the biases embedded in digital infrastructures that influence access and inclusion.

Zhen Wu (Yoyo) is a researcher, designer, and interactive artist interested in playful interaction, sensorial interfaces, emergent art. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in the Division of Integrative Systems and Design. Her current projects focus on how sensor-based LLMs can be crafted into emergent interactive art, integrating tangible, embodied, and contingent input. She designs and develops generative systems, including interactive installations, digital musical instruments, digital games, and artist-centered tools and conceptual frameworks that support such creations.

"High Sections / Low Leaps" at the Sonic City exhibition site.

PAM:The exhibition "Sonic City" investigates the interrelation between sound and the urban environment. How do you interpret the notion of a "Sonic City"? In your work, how is the city perceived, constructed, or narrated through sound?

Marcel: Cities are full of visual stimuli, of people, of cars, activities, and so on. Yet it is rare to talk about the "Sonic city." How does the city produce sound, and how does sound ultimately produce the city - especially also in times where many navigate their city with earbuds on, or sitting in an electric car, listening to music or a map app's voice. Our work literally uses recordings from Shenzhen to build a spatial, remodeled speculative version of Shenzhen.

Tristan: Sound is a fundamental part of the city, especially in our own perception. When moving to a new place, the contrast between the 2 environments, the usual and the new, often happens at night, when all things quiet down, leaving space for the soundscape of the new place. Each city, and even neighborhood has a specific soundscape that reflects its individual culture, nature, and place in time. Despite carrying so much information about a place, sound is seldom used to document environments. This work aims to put sound back at the center of the experience, rebalancing visual and auditive perceptions.

Sylvia: I have ongoing research about urban parks, and their key difference with traditional green spaces is that they include the sounds of a city–primarily automobiles as well as sounds from the population surrounding the space. With this collaboration, I was able to widen that connection between urban space and sounds into a larger scale of cities and the Greater Bay Area.

Yoyo: My understanding of "sound city" encompasses two aspects: first, the city as a source of sound, and second, how the city's perception is shaped by audible sounds. Sounds can be layered and remixed; they can be both ephemeral and transformative, leading people to believe in certain sounds. Thus, soundplays a formative role, as a particular sound can influence or even determine the future of a city.

Video still from "High Sections / Low Leaps"

PAM:"High Sections / Low Leaps" is an ongoing project centered around the Guangdong–Shenzhen–Hongkong Greater Bay Area. Could you elaborate on the motivations behind its inception, your research methodology, and how the concept of the "future city"evolved as a key thematic concern?

Marcel: For me, creating speculative future models of selected sites in the Greater Bay area is one of the best ways to explore the cities around me: it includes fieldwork to go explore the sites, taking photographs, recording the sound: these are ways for me to develop a new perspective on the environment around me. Next, we employ a very free approach to re-create the selected sites with a difference. We’re less interested in accurate remodeling, since we are not urban planners, but we look to speculate with creative means about potential futures that "could be", or perhaps, "could not be." The series thus becomes a playground to develop alternative perspectives on the reality around us.

Unprocessed output from GenAI prompted about Shenzhen’s oceanfront

Tristan: These works are a way to explore, but also reflect on these familiar environments. We only see snapshots in time, where these places evolve and transform significantly. The work aims to enhance these representations, presenting the city as it is, a dynamic, "living" entity, rather than a static postcard. The speculative aspect allows us to focus on the perceptual aspect of the city, through a multi-sensory experience. We re-mediate our perception of the city, by observing the past to imagine the future. This approach is quite similar to AI creativity, which relies on existing works to create new elements, under the guidance of its user.

Sylvia: Many cities have a shared visual style when they go through urbanization, no matter where they are. While the generative AI models are also trained on the generic visual transformation of urbanization, I tried to incorporate the characteristics and history of each location into the generations. Experimenting with text prompts of location names like "Shenzhen" "Guangzhou", and "Hong Kong" as well as deive vocabulary such as "futuristic" and "artistic" has been a fun process to understand how generative AI models interpret these words. I believe there is a power in utilizing the technology of the present to imagine the future that is informed by the past.

Images by the artists with use of commercial GenAI image generators

PAM: As a transnational and multilingual collective, what collaborative strategies or methodologies have you developed in your practice? Regarding the themes of sound and urbanity, have your diverse cultural backgrounds contributed distinct perspectives or imaginaries? How are such differences negotiated or synthesized within the work?

Marcel: Most definitely yes! In my experience of many years working in interdisciplinary artistic settings and collaborating with practitioners from all over the world – I can no longer imagine not doing

that.Interdisciplinarity and collaboration add perspectives to any given topic or project that one person alone could simply not come up with. Working in an artistic collective, like here, we challenge each other and discuss every decision – which for me is a way to get deeper into the topic, and always compare different perspectives that might be informed by different field-specific backgrounds that we have, by the different languages that we speak, the different cultural backgrounds we all have, or simply by what techniques and software each of us likes to use. In sum, working in this team here has been a great benefit to my own work!

Tristan: Urbanization in Shenzhen and Guangzhou is fundamentally different from urbanization back in France. To some extent, it also presents different, yet familiar, patterns compared to Hong Kong where I currently live. I thus rely a lot on archival data to get a better longitudinal and chronological feeling of the places we worked with: maps, satellite data, photos, etc.

Sylvia: The urbanization in Korea has been similar to that of Japan but condensed into a shorter period of time. I have seen many parts of China that resemble Korea a few decades ago, but are transforming into a big city at a speed that is far more rapid than what Korea went through. It is interesting to see how these neighboring countries are going through similar yet different phases of urbanization and how that affects the life of the citizens

Yoyo: I find it fascinating that in this project, I can see how my collaborators have different perspectives from mine. Growing up in Shenzhen, my understanding of the city is shaped by my personal experiences and long-term familiarity. During the project, my collaborators' views, who have less time living in this area, have opened up new ideas for me. Their focus on the construction sites is particularly interesting. For me, construction has always been a part of life, with new skyscrapers popping up everywhere. What feels normal to me catches their attention and highlights the charm of a rapidly developing city.

PAM: Your project focuses on Shenzhen Longgang, Shekou, and Guangzhou Nansha. Urban areas shaped by complex layers of industry, changes, and planning. What informed the selection of these specific sites? How do you conceptualize their roles or symbolic projections within your vision of future urbanity?

Marcel：Actually, two of of the three sites presented in this exhibition are not directly chosen by us, but they arose by exhibition opportunities: in 2022, we were invited to participate in the CC Longcheng Creative Commune "1st SeeD Pilot Project Exhibition" that was funded by the Longgang Government and emphasized the new Longgang High Tech Corridor that the Government had been establishing. Our wish was to work on a new site-specific project, so we chose Longgang’s High Tech Corridor as our first site.

"1st SeeD Pilot Project Exhibition"

After that, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou invited us to exhibit our quite special approach on their campus, and they commissioned us to produce a new version that is specific to where the university is located. This motivated us to produce a version for Guangzhou-Nansha, which is equally undergoing rapid urban development. Therefore, the choice of these two sites was very much in line with each other and with the project, as they demonstrate the expansive development in the Greater Bay Area. Shenzhen’s Seaworld area, however, was freely chosen by us artists as a way of emphasizing Shenzhen’s growth on reclaimed land and to show one of its quite early development projects that definitely has a representative character today. It has become an important landmark of the city.

PAM: The work constructs three speculative urban scenarios through multi-channel video and sound. In contrast to visual representation, how do you perceive the function of sound in narrating urban futures? In your view, can sound also operate as a medium for spatial construction?

Marcel: "Audiovisual" media, by definition, are composed of an image and a sound playing at the same time. Since the advent of film (with sound), many have started playing with the possibility of creating experiences that would not be possible in reality: for example by detaching what we see from what we hear. In our work, we built on this fact and developed two specific methods for the visuals and for the sound.

The visuals speculate about potential futures and pasts, using GenAI and game engine rendering. The sound world re-interprets real on-site recordings from mostly mechanical and environmental noise, which at times is loud and annoying. Through a framework of creative processing, the field recordings were filtered, granulated, and re-composed so that they form a sound world that is at once "noisy," but also "dream-like," even quasi "musical" at times. In simplified terms, you could say that the visuals are more invested in the city’s future, the auditory world is more interested in its mechanical past.

As far as the use of sound for a spatial experience goes: yes, sound is key in creating a space; every architect knows how the acoustics of a space inform the user’s emotional state, and people who make games and VR environments know how to use spatial audio to create realistic renderings of the sonic world. Our artwork also uses spatial audio: the sound sources are spread out in the game scene, and depending on the camera’s position from where the video is rendered, the sound will be different.

Modeling a future city based on actual data, and positioning “cameras” for the museum spectators to look into the gamified city

Yoyo: Sound, compared to visual images, presents an abstract and vague sense of representation in narrative, providing the audience with a sense of imagination rather than imparting information.

PAM: Your installation suggests that technology is increasingly shaping human modes of perception. Do you believe that contemporary urban subjects are becoming more reliant on technologically mediated sensory experiences? How might such mediation influence our ways of understanding and inhabiting urban space?

Tristan："Technology" is simply a new medium in art practice. Photography, video, were once "technology", and experienced similar frictions before becoming the pervasive media we know today. One major difference is how fast technology has been evolving in recent years. 15 years ago, AR/VR was in its infancy and computer graphics were definitely not as accessible as today. 5 years ago, generative images and videos were a complex process that required significant know-how. Nowadays, these media can be used very efficiently, supporting the creative process rather than impeding it. Naturally, technology affects how we perceive the world. Photography revolutionised how we document the world, especially in terms of accuracy. Conversely, the technologies we are using in the project allow us to go beyond accuracy and realism, conveying speculations and perceptions rather than a 1:1 representation of reality.

Sylvia：We are already living a life that is very technology dependent, mediated through the screen in a format of not only visuals but many other senses, increasingly so with the advent of new technology that replicates the traditional sensory experience in a digital way. With the addition of AI, now even thought processes are being mediated through technology. This brings me to question what do we now classify as "the technology" when we are already so immersed in it? The increasing integration of technology into urban life calls for a new category of experiences and new vocabulary for this new way of life and being.

PAM: This artwork employs vintage CRT monitors as visual display devices. What considerations led to this material choice? What conceptual or perceptual roles does this technological medium play within the installation?

Marcel：How humans perceive the world around them, for example a city, has been shaped by technologies for several centuries. Mechanical technologies of transportation, urban technologies, or film have affected how a society sees and understands the environment around them. By introducing an outdated technology into the artwork, the CRT monitor, we emphasize how technologies literally colorize what we see. This artwork utilizes the most state-of-the-art technologies such as GenAI and game engine rendering; yet the result is presented to us as if it were made 60 years ago. Playing with temporal dimensions, both future and past, is part of the artwork.

PAM: The exhibition includes a sound-based guide recorded by the artists themselves. Could you reflect on your experience participating in this process?

Yoyo: The recording experience was great! I found the final recording result very interesting as a remix of my Chinese parts with Marcel's English.

"High Sections / Low Leaps" Exhibition Label

Marcel: Commonly, in an exhibition in any art museum, you would find labels with a deion of every artwork on the wall. For "Sonic City," the curator decided that in addition to the standard label, there be an auditory deion of each work: a sort of an audio guide, made by the artists themselves, and potentially featuring the artist(s)’ own voice(s). I believe given the auditory interest of this exhibition, this is a well-suited choice that not only brings the artworks closer to the audience in a quite intimate way (hearing the artists speak), but also, it uses sound as a medium to convey a message. In our specific case, we also integrated sound from the actual artwork in the audio guide, so that the audience, while learning about the conceptual framework of the piece, also engages the sound of the work itself.

PAM: How would you describe your experience collaborating with Pingshan Art Museum on this exhibition?

Marcel: I have known the PAM since I moved to Shenzhen 3,5 years ago, and I have learned to appreciate the institution for two key points: one is that I find its quality of contemporary artworks presented higher than anywhere else in Shenzhen. Two is that I got to know the institution, through repeated collaboration over the years, as extraordinarily professional. Collaborating with PAM on the making of "Sonic City" was a great pleasure as we were lucky enough to work together with their professional production team, who realized our artwork exactly according to our plans and desires.

PAM: How would you guide sound curious audiences to explore and listen to the city’s sonic narratives?

Yoyo: I would like to introduce the sensory map method raised by Kate McLean: You can try to find a sound in the space, then move around until it disappears, while recording your trajectory. This will help construct a sound human entanglement that reflects the unique outcome based on your unique, performative experience.

Tristan：Urban environments are constantly changing, but we often close our senses to it, especially in familiar places. For those curious about their perception of the city, I would suggest to go through their usual day: getting up, commuting, working, going groceries, etc. But, just once, focus on your perception of the environment. What do you see, hear, smell, feel? Is it any different than you remember? How do you feel about it?

Marcel：I kindly invite anyone, really anyone, to stop in the middle of a big street, or close to an intersection in the city, to close your eyes (if it’s safe), and think carefully about: what do I hear right now? What are the sound sources around me? Which sounds are very familiar to me? Which ones are loud? Soft? And which ones are completely unfamiliar to me? How could I describe them in a few words? Doing this doesn’t require any previous knowledge or training, but it is a way to attune your perception to the things you don’t know yet about your city, and to the things you cannot see, and would otherwise miss.