Tzu Ni Hung

It’s easy to mistake Tzu-Ni Hung’s resonance chambers for bowls with a hole in the bottom, but they are instruments that can be played with a bow, or components in speakers or sound installations. During her residency, the Taiwanese artist explored their different resonances, which depend on the thickness of the wall and the roundness of the rim, and recorded the sound of each piece before firing and after. She also captured the “noise” of the cooling ceramics, an intimate tingling like countless glass needles breaking, to be part of her auditory ecosystems. Hung not only uses the recordings in her own audio works, she also plans to include them in a sample pack for other sound artists she might collaborate with. Her experimental way of working with ceramics is rather a statement in Taiwan, where tradition is revered and anxiously guarded – mostly by men, of course.