We were walking along the Thames on the way back home from o2 after we finish our dinner. The sun is setting and the sky is glowing. On the other side of the river is Isle of Dogs where there are a lot of finance companies. Compare with Greenwich, the two banks of the river are in sharp contrast. When we passed the University of Greenwich nearby the Trinity Laban, we heard a beautiful melody. At first, we thought someone was playing an organ.
(Picture from https://festival.org/whats-on/gdif-chorus/)
When we get closer to the lawn in front of the building of Trinity Laban, I saw a red beam. After that, I know the sound I heard is from this installation. We quickly ran to the entrance and get into the lawn where the installation was settled. This large outdoor installation consisted of several installations like sea lighthouses. Every ‘sea lighthouses’ was consisted of a tripod under two speakers which was connected with each other by an iron tube. There is something like a LED strip at each port of the speakers. I walked around under the different ‘sea lighthouses’. I can feel the power of the waves came from different speakers was weaken because of the distance between me and each speaker. The spinning speed of the speaker's arms was modified by the staff. I was feeling like swimming in the sea, and the waves make my body float up and down. I am not sure if it is because this piece is located in Trinity Laban, which is a music and dance academy. This sound makes me engage in a virtual space, a word is not real, a word does not belong to the land. I stood in the middle of this huge lawn and faced to the Thames and the Isle of Dog. The lights from the Isle of Dog make the Thames shine. The winds and the interlaced sound waves make me float in the air. As Chris Salter described in Alien Agency, sounds do not come from objects. They have the ability to perform like the entities who have their own power to affect our bodies, souls, and the world surrounding us.
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