Mark Wong

"Memory Rifts" now showing at Singapore Art Museum's Sensorium 360° (31 Jul to 22 Oct 2014)

Memory Rifts (2014)

9-channel sound installation: sound, laptop, speakers
Duration: 6:52 min
Installation dimensions variable

"A musical work sited in unexpected and liminal spaces within the museum, Memory Rifts expands the perceptual potential of a single audio composition, while probing how the mind receives, and recalls, acoustic information.

"Comprising of a nonet (musical composition for nine instruments), Memory Rifts departs from the conventions of how such a piece would usually be performed and experienced. Split into single channels that play one instrument each, the composition is broadcast over nine speakers that are spatially dispersed, making it impossible to hear the composition uniformly, or in entirety, in any one location. Rather, it is through the chance and repeated encounters of its melodies and motifs, rhythms and riffs, points and counterpoints that prompt an active – albeit unconscious – act of listening.

"Although the composition is only experienced in parts, the work points to the tendency of the brain to form patterns – be it sonic or visual – and Gestalt psychology’s principle that the mind pieces together disparate perceptual stimuli to generate whole forms. Yet even as the mind organises, memory is also fallible, and the rifts are revealed as an imperfect refrain, looping in the head." (Joyce Toh, Singapore Art Museum)

Press:
"Two of this writer's favourite pieces are perhaps the most unassuming of the lot [...] you would be forgiven for overlooking Mark Wong's Memory Rifts, an installation of speakers scattered all over, each playing a singular instrument from one whole piece you can never hear in its totality. Musical riffs waft in and out, like little earworms, looping in your head." - Mayo Martin, Today, 2 Aug 2014 , online at http://www.todayonline.com/entertainment/arts/arts-reviews/sensorium-360deg-355, retrieved 2 Aug 2014

"Mark Wong’s 'Memory Riffs' [sic] is a fractured, disjointed musical work that seems to emanate from the more obscure corners of the museum, pushing visitors to heighten and sharpen their senses in order to piece the broken composition together." - Darryl Wee, Blouin Artinfo, 11 Aug 2014, online at (http://sea.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1049982/sensorium-360deg-a