When you leave a city, what remains in your mind?
Last year, I spent five months in Helsinki and then came back to my home country. One day, I accidentally saw a video in Helsinki metro; those “beep” warning sound, cracking sound between train and track, Finnish and Swedish broadcasting bring my memory back to Helsinki. It reminds me I used to go to school by metro; I fell asleep there and missed the station; and, when the first time I took the metro, I was holding a ticket and wondering why there was no one to check it, etc.
This project was based on the feeling I had when memory was raised by sound in a certain location. Thus, I want to create different sound memories in different locations or situations of Helsinki, hopefully, to open other people’s minds who ever have any memory in Helsinki. In this project, I chose seven cases: Central Railway Station, Oodi library, Linnanmäki amusement park, Suomenlinna, metro, Helsinki Cathedral and Torille. Each one has a corresponding illustration and is attached to one capacity sensor. Sounds are pre-recorded and will play once the current over the threshold, in this case, when a user’s hand close enough to a capacitive sensor.
Qianyu Fang
New Media Design and Production
