Invited to do some audio recordings and to contribute to the building of a sound archive about and in the coastal region of Chiayi, I was expecting a lot for my first stay, this month of December 2008. Here are my notes from the field.

The first listening experience of Chiayi was arriving at the High Speed Railway station, then going to our appartment in Taibao. This place is in a new semi-urban area, where roads are crossing fields of sugarcane and bad-looking modern buildings, with sparse american suburb-style residential buildings. The sounds of this area are especially anonymous : just vehicles passing by. This sounds could happen anywhere in the world. It is the most usual and the most boring sounds one could listen. But I find this listening experience very interesting : I just arrived in a region of Taiwan that I don't know. I want to listen to the cultural and ecological specificities of this region, but all that is proposed to the traveller is cars and roads. This leads to two questions. The first one is a disappointed one : "what a sound recordist shall do in such place ?". But quickly it is replaced by a more enthousiastic question : "how can I discover the hidden sounds of Chiayi ?". So maybe this recording project is about an exploration of the region of Chiayi through listening. This will certainly influence the content of the sound archive, and influence the way the future listeners will discover the archives.

The second listening experience happened in the temple of Puzih. Wandering in a temple while wearing headphones and holding a pair of microphones is not the easiest way to be discrete. So most of the time, when I want to record sounds in such situation, I just sit somewhere and wait until people around forget me. Because of this waiting and an attentive listening, one would be more concentrated and will notice numerous sounds and related behaviours. Here in this temple, the most surprising thing was the overall acoustic. The sounds of the street in front of the temple were absent, completly turned down. And the feeling in this temple was strange, like if we were in a wider room. Even in the open-air parts, where there is no roof, I had the feeling of being indoor. Because of the fragile and old decoration of this temple, a wide protection, a metal hangar has been build, housing the temple, stopping the outside sounds, and making this specific acoustic. I recorded then some workers reparing the roof of the temple. Their voices where coming from the top of this quiet place in a very surreal. These voices represent this particuliar period of time where the temple is becoming old, needing care and fixing. Other typical sounds include the incense lighter, doing a loud and short 'clac'. Sometimes it may be used by a visitor to light his cigarette, but no listener would made the difference... Another sound is oftenly met in the temples of Taiwan, the divinations blocks "poe". Their falling on the floor not only indicate the god's opinion on the believer's questions. It also informs the listeners about the size of the room by triggering its reverberation. These two last sounds are not endemic to this temple or the Chiayi region, but it fit to one's expectation about what should be heard in this kind of place. Finally I spent a little bit of time recording a mother and her child walking in the different rooms. Each time she would enter in another space, the sound of her wooden shoes would make a different echo. This time, in this temple, there was no particuliar activity, but I could imagine Ba Jia Jiang, Tangki and other ritual music there. These would be for a next recording session. But one thing would be very interesting : to come back as much as possible to this place, in the early morning, in the evening. To be present when all kind of believers are present. And to catch the daily life of this place. The tiny details that needs time to discover. A woman whispering, an old man repeating a god's name, some discussions, some jokes, and unexpected events...

Then, we went to the ecological area of Biegu, sorry, not Biegu but Aogu.
Migrating birds. These two words sound to me as a mantra, as a magical name. I had so short time to record them and became obsessed by it. And the first morning we went there, we saw so many of these animals. I can't remember the chinese names or the latin names of all these birds that our guest (a local inhabitant, bird-lover, fisherman and craftman) mentionned. But what I remember the most was not the birdsongs. It was the windsongs. Because in winter time, in Chiayi, the wind that comes from the North blows heavily. If a migrating bird can resist to this wind, my microphones are much more shy. In this case, I had to bite my lips to avoid saying bad words : my stereo microphones would not catch the ambience of the ecological area like I would like, it just caught a huge rolling growling. My parabolic microphones would not catch the delicate calls or the barking of the water birds, it would just be pushed by the blasts of wind. Even the ears are under pression because of the wind. The wind stops the other sounds, the tympani can't work very well. Therefore, I recorded the pine trees, the bushes and the electric lines singing under the movement of the air...
The next days I was a little bit more lucky. But not that much about the birds.
One sounds that I've heard and which is a quite special experience is this whispering coming from the dried leaves. It was very close to me, less than a meter, while I was observering the distant birds. I knew already this sounds, I've heard it in France, but in Taiwan, it really scares me. Because it is the sound that makes a snake moving on the dried grass. I didn't record it, I just flew away...
Another very interesting sounds was coming from the water. On the shore of the swamp area, I heard a very tiny sound. The water seemed empty and quiet but I had the feeling that something was happening inside. I immediately threw inside my home-made hydrophone, a cheap microphone able to record inside the water. And then I heard a huge activity. A lot of water bugs were singing. These animals are almost invisible, they are just very small black dots swimming. But they can make loud sound under the water. Sometimes, another aquatic insect was trying to eat my hydrophone producing a huge crunshing sound, but it was hopefully harmless for my equipment.
I would not be honest if I say that all these sounds, the wind, the egrets, the herons, the insects and other animals, where the most representative sounds of this ecological area. Because the most stunning, the most impressive, and the most intrusive sounds were man made. The sounds of the boats for example. Their motors produce a drone, a humming that is always present. Non-stop, one can hear them, like a background on the soundscape. But everyday, what makes this place so special is when the air, the atmosphere is teared to pieces by fight planes. The army send everyday a couple of these screaming machiens to this place. During twenty minutes to half an hour hey seem to play above our head, doing elegant curves. And producing an extremely loud jet sound. Then we have to stop speaking. We have to stop listening. Everything seems to stop under this incredible noise. Our host told us that there are also other army sounds. These sounds are related to the blocks of polystirenes that are spread everywhere in the natural reserve. Soldiers shoot these white blocks, then the wind spread these targets, very sad proofs of human activities in the swamp.
Next time, when I'll come back to this area, the migrating birds would have left. But still will remain the local birds. Unless they would be kicked out of the area if the military activities develop too much...

I have visited Penghu many times in the last four years. But I never have been able to record a fish market : nowadays, the selling is organized electronically, and no interesting sound is produced. This is not the case here, in Dongshih, where is held every afternoon a traditional fish market. This happen under a wide reverberant space, where all voices are melting into a loud whisper. People come to see the fish and they discuss about the quality, the freshness and the prices of the sea foods lying on the floor. Sometimes a voice annouces something through loudspeakers. Sometimes some big plastic container are pushed and fall, producing a very loud drum sound : "Boum" ! The workers are sorting the fishes, orgazing them into categories, and when the throw them into buckets, it makes a discrete slapping sounds : "Slap" ! But what is the most surprising is when the sea products needs to be put on the floor. The fishes, shrimps and other animals are organized into patterns : lines of small piles, reminding me land art. At least two women are working for doing these patterns of fishes. One is throwing a bucket containg a few fishes, it bounces on the floor with a big "clac !" and glide on the wet concrete floor during several meters "Shhrrrr !", and the second lady catch it and suddenly reverse it, throwing its content on the floor with another short "clac". The operation is repeated many times until the floor of the whole building is covered with piles of fishes. Then a strident blast of whistle comes from an area. People gathered in this direction. A man holding a notebook wait above one of the piles of fish. When people become attentive, he starts. He's recitating monotonously in taiwanese. His words are decreasing numbers, corresponding to the decreasing price of the fish. When someone decide to buy it at the spoken price, he will give the man his personal name stamp. The guy use it on his notebook, write the price, tear the page, and give it to the customer. Then he restart his vocal process on the next pile of fish. All the potential customers are silent, attentive to the prices. Therefore the man who organize the selling doesn't need to speak very loudly. And if one moves off a little bit, he won't be able to hear correctly the prices. So it is a quite intimate selling, something I've never witnessed in Taiwan ! The sound ambience and different sonic events of this fish market are a very strong experience. For sure customers, fishermen and sellers would be able to recognize it when it'll disappear, replacing the voices of the people by digits on scree...

What could be heard in Budai ? An answer could be the salt. In this town there was in the past an important production of salt. But since a few years, this economic activity disappeared with its cultural heritage. Last year a few people, led my a passionated person, decided to make it alive again. Their intention was to keep a trace of memory of this specific activity by invitating elder people who worked in this field in the past to share their knowledge about how to produce and gather salt from the water, using the sun and the wind for this simple alchemy. We arrived in this area at the end of the day, and there was still a child and two other person arranging the fragments of ceramics on the earth. The patterns of ceramics, the borders made with mud, the blur water in the small fields and the white traces are nice to see. But discussing with the people, we learnt that in the mornings when children comes from local schools and work with old people, there is also some interesting sound ambience. The wind is present, and the tools such as a wooden hammer or a very heavy roller makes sound on the ceramics. And more important are the discussions of the elders. Because workers are close to each other and share stories or informations. One can imagine than in the past, this manual work had also a social role. Probably noone recorded this sound environment in the past, but at least interviews should be done with the last old people participating to this renaissance of the salt.

These differents listening anecdotes told a bit about how to discover a region through the ears, and also through microphones. When going for a cool sound hunting session, one can imagine a lot of amazing situations. In reality it never correspond to what is experienced in the reality, in the field, because away from a sound studio, no one can take control on the events. The sounds of this part of the region of Chiayi where not connected to each others. Some are completly unrelated (the natural area, the economic or religious activities) except for one thing : the importance of human activities. And they were also geographically disconnected : we needed to drive between the cities several tens of minutes in order to visit the places. Therefore the role of an archive would be to put all these listening experiences into contrast, into dialogue. The archive may help the audience to think about the region from the sound aspect, and help to find relations and roles of sounds.

18.12.2008