(12/2023) Hertz's Trajectory

Short-film Still Frame

Hertz's Trajectory

ARTIST: BAI LIU
TIME: DECEMBER 2023

When you stroll along a certain road in the city, the various sounds that come to your ears may contain mysterious symbols from the universe.

The artist Bai Liu, who lives in UK, first used artificial intelligence (AI) technology to automatically arrange 70 audio segments collected from the ancient city of Edinburgh. So, a wonderful song containing information of urban geographic coordinates & various sounds was generated by AI! Subsequently, Bai used the cymatics experiment method proposed by German scientist Ernst Chladni to fully shoot and capture the dynamic waveform of this piece of music composed by AI when vibrating on a metal plate. Finally, based on the photographic records, Bai successfully visualized the city song created by AI arrangement into a fascinating fractal geometry in the short film. These intricate fractal patterns can be seen as both metaphors for musical rhythms and abstract expressions of urban maps.

Hertz's Trajectory, as a visualization experiment of urban road sound by tech artist Bai Liu, combines the artist's own critical thinking in music computing, geospatial analysis, and AI-generated works. This experimental short film focuses on exploring whether current and future cities still have 'life vitality' with the rapid development of cities? And will there still be a 'relationship of belonging' between human and urban living space in the future? Can music generated by AI based on human collective memory fragments awaken human collective emotions? In fact, the various sounds that can be heard in daily life are the carriers of urban 'life vitality' and witnesses to urban lives and historical changes.

Artist Bai hopes to program songs by integrating the daily sounds of a city, then use a multi-dimensional sensory short film that combines sight+hearing to mobilize the audience to explore the emotional relationship between themselves and the residence city.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17s5mEPBDVzaB2z0mELS4WJ80uggcBatV?usp=share_link

Bai Liu's Cymatics Experiment Vlog

https://youtu.be/hGuCBbP-uVA?si=d-RuJmWl3ufX15Eg

Cymatics is a subset of modal vibrational phenomena. Typically the surface of a plate, diaphragm, or membrane is vibrated, and regions of maximum and minimum displacement are made visible in a thin coating of particles, paste, or liquid. Different patterns emerge in the excitatory medium depending on the geometry of the plate and the driving frequency.

In the artist Bai Liu's cymatics experiment vlog based the method of scientist Ernst Chladni, the Chladni Figures appeared during the experiment were presented under audio vibrations of Sound 9, Sound 14,

Sound 57, Sound 23, and Sound 69, respectively.

V1.0 Hertz's Trajectory: Visualization of Urban Road Sound (Original Experimental Record)

I utilized Chladni's sound graphics extraction method, which was successfully validated when facing sound samples before. By playing the generated final song (after arranging), my metal plate ultimately generated all the graphics.

My final print work will be similar to a hand-flipped book, as it will include all the Chladni Figures in above video. At the same time, it is also a poetry anthology that will include some excellent poems co-created by 15 interviewees.