Signal.Flow[ver. 1]

The air is never empty. Broadcast signals course through it at every moment, and we have long learned to take this saturation for granted — rarely asking how these signals come to mean anything to us, or what they ask of us in return. Signal.Flow [ver.1] begins from a counter-question: can the signal be disturbed, intercepted, played — and if so, what would it become? Commissioned by ZERO1 for the 2010 01SJ Biennial under the theme "Build Your Own World," with the support of the Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan, the work is tuned to its site: San Jose — the city where Charles Herrold's pioneering station carried some of the world's earliest scheduled broadcasts, and where radio has long shaped both everyday life and the local economy.

Outside the entrance of South Hall, two acrylic tubes stand bolted vertically to the ground. Each houses a radio receiver, speakers, and a motor-driven array of spinning red LEDs. The lights "play" the audio waveforms of whatever signal the receiver picks up, while infrared sensors govern the tuning: as visitors draw near, the tubes skip between stations, the rhythm of their retuning quickening and slackening with proximity — splicing together, in effect, a new station made of fragments of everything on air in San Jose at that moment. Spun at speed, the LED arrays inscribe these waveforms in mid-air through persistence of vision, as cylindrical afterimages: sound rendered as a rotating figure of light.

The work's site-specificity is thus twofold: its raw material is the city's own radio spectrum; its score is written by the passing of pedestrians. No two moments sound alike. Less an object than a performance device, it is an open instrument that anyone can play simply by moving — through which the invisible, habitually ignored signals of the everyday are briefly seized, fragmented, and returned to the street as light and sound.

空氣從不是空的。廣播訊號無時無刻在其中流動，而我們早已將這種飽和視為理所當然——鮮少追問這些訊號如何對我們產生意義，或它們向我們索求了什麼。《Signal.Flow [ver.1]》正是從一個反向的提問出發：訊號能否被擾動、被攔截、被演奏？若可以，它將成為什麼？本作由 ZERO1 委託創作，於 2010 年 01SJ 雙年展以「Build Your Own World」為題展出，並獲行政院文化建設委員會支持。作品調頻至它的所在之地——聖荷西：Charles Herrold 的先驅電台曾在此進行世界最早的定時廣播之一，而廣播長久以來形塑著這座城市的日常生活與地方經濟。

在 South Hall 展館入口外，兩支壓克力管垂直固定於地面，每支管內裝有一部廣播接收器、喇叭，以及由馬達驅動、旋轉中的紅色 LED 陣列。燈光「演奏」著接收器所擷取訊號的聲音波形；紅外線感應器則掌管選台——當觀眾走近，管體便在頻道之間跳動，調頻的節奏隨人的遠近時而加快、時而放緩，即時拼貼出一個新的電台，由此刻聖荷西空中所有播送內容的碎片組成。高速旋轉之下，LED 陣列藉視覺暫留將波形書寫於空中，形成圓柱狀的光之殘影：聲音在此化為一座旋轉的發光形體。

這件作品的場域性因此是雙重的：它的材料是這座城市自身的廣播頻譜，它的樂譜則由行人的往來所寫成——沒有任何兩個時刻聽起來相同。與其說是一件物件，它更是一具展演裝置、一件開放的樂器，任何人只要移動身體便能演奏；日常中那些不可見、慣於被忽略的訊號，在此被短暫地攫取、碎裂，再以光與聲的形式，交還給街道。