Susurrus

︎ Mar, 2026
Immersive Sound Installation


 


Susurrus is an immersive sound installation that explores self-presence as a fleeting, relational, and time-based phenomenon. The work will take the form of a narrow passage made from two lightweight polythene sheets suspended in parallel, with contact microphones attached to their surfaces. As visitors move through the passage, their bodies disturb the surrounding air and set the sheets into subtle motion. These vibrations are captured in real time and processed through a modular synthesis system, where the transient sounds of touch, friction, and air displacement activate, transform, and spatially redistribute pre-recorded sonic memories throughout the space. The installation attends to the fragile threshold between movement, material, and memory, rendering the participant’s presence audible as an ephemeral sonic event.


Using polythene sheets as resonant membranes, Susurrus transforms an ordinary material into a sensitive listening surface. These thin architectural skins register what usually escapes perception: air movement, minor friction, and the quiet acoustics of passing. A responsive lighting environment will also react to the sound in real time, extending the sonic event into a subtle visual atmosphere. By calling fragments of past sound into the present moment, while folding immediate bodily encounters back into memory, the installation proposes listening as a way of sensing how the self appears, disappears, and is continually re-formed in time.


Produced by Bryan Yueshen Wu & Ke Peng