soundpedro 2021 participation: VBODOBV | dEvolution: Au Naturel Absent of Stimulation & June 5th Audioscapes Beginning of the End

Ching Ching Cheng was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the United States in 2002. She received her MFA from Art Center College of Design. Ching exhibited at LACMA Rental and Sales Gallery, Chinese American Museum, Craft and Folk Art Museum, 21c Museum, DTLA ArtCenter, colleges, universities and art fairs through out the United States. She attended an artist-in-residency program at 943 Studio in Kunming, China in 2011. She taught lectures and workshops at colleges, Universities, museums, and private art centers. She received grants from art and cultural center in Taiwan, and from the city of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Artist Location: Altadena, CA
Social Media: Artist Website | Instagram

Proposed work as accepted for soundpedro 2021:
Beginning of the End
Inspired by John Cage’s 4’33”, there is no actual silence at any space and time. Modern city life, like Los Angeles, is filled with sounds and noises from transportations, plus bits of sounds from birds. Cars have become part of our lives, especially living in Los Angeles, people are usually busy and don’t have much time to just stand on the street to listen to the sound of the city. In the early Covid pandemic in 2020 during the shutdown, many people, including myself, had to change our routine of daily life. Walking around the neighborhood had become one of the routines which I adopted during this time. Sound has played an important role in solidarity and loneliness. Having a routine makes us feel grounded. Besides what we are doing and what space we are in, what sounds resonate in that space and what noise we produce are also part of the routine we search for. The audio of this work is a digital manipulation from recordings of the street in Pasadena.

I would like to have the audio installed indoor if possible. Can be in a studio space, room, or hallway. I also would like to create installation with video projection (without sound) to accompany the audio work.

Absent of Stimulation
This video work is exploring the relationships between auditory, brain, and memory. When we hold a seashell up to your ear, we can hear the waves of the ocean, as if the sounds from the seashell’s past environment are still echoing within it. But what we actually hear is the sound of resonating air produced by the shell’s cavity. Whenever there are missing sounds, the brain creates imaginary sounds to fill the gap. When we can not find answers from science, instead, we tend to look for spiritual meanings. Scientifically, ringing in the ears could be one of the symptoms of hearing loss, but many people also believe that It is the moment of spiritual awakening. The sound or sensation of ear ringing is due to being tuned into the divine sound of the universe and resonating with source energy.

2 minuets two-channel video (This is optional. Can have the video along with the audio, or just the audio without video. Or the audio and video can be located at different locations. I am also interested in using headphone for audio to produce more intimate feeling of the sound in head space. The video can be split in the middle to be a two-channel video work)

A video by Ching Ching Cheng
Cinematographer: Aakash Raj

In collaboration with science researcher Raymond Goldsworthy at USC KECK