Project 2 -- A Greet

The purpose of this project is to explore the potential of sounds in conveying abstract emotions. It is an audio poem, yet it differs from the conventional forms of poetry by having little text but only a short dialogue taking place in a private space between two unknown characters. From my perspective, everything is defined by what they can accomplish, thus poetry is not tied with the form it adopts, but the scenario it creates and the sensation it conjures from the audience; language and text are only there to aid.

The piece is composed of four different soundtracks. It begins with the sound of someone entering a quiet room from outside, and transitions into a segment of piano practice recorded from my room accompanied by the rhythmic heartbeats in the background; the piano and heartbeat overlap with the sound of two characters talking, which is edited excerpt from the movie Her, where I got my inspiration from. It seems to be a conversation between two lovers, but in the movie, the female voice is generated by an AI-software and the relationship between the two characters is but hypothetical; In other words, it is in fact a monologue of Theodore, the male character. Communication frees us from loneliness, but it is often not with another human being like us, but with that hypothetical voice in our mind, the echo of ourselves. This echo is symbolized by both the piano and the female voice, both are fitful and they eventually quiet down, because we can’t always hear our own mind and that’s the reason why loneliness is sometimes irresolvable.