What is happening right now
This page is already playing, using your microphone and your loudspeaker. You do not need to press anything. Just keep reading.
Every sound you make comes back out of the speaker 90 seconds later. When it comes back it enters the microphone again, waits another 90 seconds, and returns once more — each time 18 decibels quieter than the last. It will keep circulating until it is too quiet to hear, and every round erases a little more of the round before it.
What matters here is time, not melody. The work does not ask you to hear anything in particular; it only asks you to stay with it for a while. So read slowly.
There is nothing to operate and nothing to get right. The only thing the work asks for is duration: that you stay long enough for a sound to come back, and long enough to notice that it is no longer quite the same sound.
The work is a concept, not a fixed installation. It needs very little: a microphone, a sufficiently long delay, and a loudspeaker. Those few things hold in any room, on any device — including the one you are using now.
If you say something now, in 90 seconds you will hear your own voice from before. By then you will probably no longer remember what you said. Recordings keep the words we did not know we said — or perhaps never said at all.
Overview
A feedback piece about time and volatility: whatever the microphone hears comes back out of the loudspeaker 90 seconds later, enters the microphone again, and so on, each round 18 decibels quieter than the last, until it is too quiet to hear. It has no fixed form — the web version happens in the browser, the live version was one performance. What matters is not melody but the time you spend with it.
Motivation
I submitted it as my final project for the first semester of my second year. During the presentation a teacher asked me: "You know your grade will be very low, right?" I said I knew. In truth I didn't know; I didn't think the work was bad at all — it was about the deepest anxiety and pain I had at the time.
By then I had been wishing for a long time that I would die in an accident — a traffic collision, say — and be completely forgotten without a trace. So "being forgotten" here is not a figure of speech: I wanted to make a work that leaves no trace — sound comes in, returns, gets quieter, disappears; no tape, no file, close the page and nothing is left.
Later it was performed once at Trigger (硬糖, 2024.12.14), but that was a compromise: I do not want it to be a stage work. It belongs to a flatter, more open and more dispersed kind of space and experience.
Where it comes from
The work is very close to Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room — and, curiously, I did not know that piece when I made it. The first inspiration came from Cathy van Eck's series of works built on microphone-loudspeaker feedback, and from my interest at the time in existentialist philosophy, in memory, and in art practices that leave no record.
This work is very much like Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room, but interestingly: when creating this work, I did not yet know I Am Sitting in a Room.
The original inspiration for this work came from Cathy Van Eck's series of works based on microphone and loudspeaker feedback (mainly Words, Words, Words, Empty Chairs, and What We Keep) and my interest at the time in existentialist philosophy (evoked by What We Keep, which can be traced back to the anime Black Lagoon), memory (riverrun, past Eve and Adam's..), and art practices/performances/works that leave no record.
The thought that photography is a reality more real than reality itself — and so is recording — came from Susan Sontag (On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others), and also from something concrete: a friend heard his own voice through the loudspeaker, including words he had never said and I had never heard.
How it works
In the web version the delay and the feedback are built entirely from native Web Audio nodes; there is no JavaScript in the audio path. Sound from the microphone goes into a 90-second delay, out through the loudspeaker, and back into the microphone through the physical room, 18 decibels quieter each round.
The grey ink behind the page is a visualisation of that delay filling up, not decoration: it does not grow when no sound is flowing. If microphone permission is refused, if the page is not in a secure context, or if the browser suspends the audio, no ink appears at all — that is deliberate, not a defect.
The live version needs very little: one microphone (omnidirectional if possible), a long enough digital delay (100% wet, variable delay time, no feedback), a full-range monitor, and a limiter between microphone and delay to keep the loop from running away and damaging either the audience's hearing or the equipment. Delay time and total period are decided by the room; the plan was 1 hour 30 minutes — the length of one class at my school.
This work is really just (why say just? Isn't this kind of concise, small-scale work what I love the most? Actually it's just (just?) a habitual, unwarranted (truly unwarranted?) self-sabotage) a microphone (preferably omnidirectional), a sufficiently long delay effect processor (100% wet/dry ratio, variable delay time, no feedback — I generally use a digital one), a loudspeaker (I usually use a full-range studio monitor, but one with its own tonal character is also fine), and a limiter (to prevent hearing damage): the audio captured by the microphone goes into the delay processor, the delay processor's output is connected to the loudspeaker, and the loudspeaker feeds back into the microphone in the physical world (I generally adjust the microphone gain and loudspeaker volume to keep the feedback level between -12 and -18 dB); the limiter is typically placed between the microphone and the delay processor, but as long as it can prevent an infinite positive feedback loop between the microphone and loudspeaker to protect the audience's hearing and audio equipment, that's sufficient.
My contribution
Work, web implementation and live realisation: me. Cover image designed by 南美大虾.
Where it has been shown
End-of-term presentation, Music Engineering, Shanghai Conservatory (first semester of second year); 硬糖, Trigger (Shanghai), 2024.12.14. The live recording and photographs on this page are from the latter.
Postlude
This work was submitted as my final project for the first semester of my sophomore year; around the same time, I co-created Ecce Homo with Allen.
During the final presentation, a teacher (sadly, the only one among the panel I thought could understand and accept my work) asked me: "You know your grade will be very low, right?"
I replied: "I know."
In truth, I didn't know — I didn't think this work was bad at all.
This work was about my deepest anxieties and pain at the time: back then I was someone difficult not to notice, and I both enjoyed and resented it.
By then I had long been wishing and fantasizing about dying in an accident (such as a traffic collision) and being completely forgotten without a trace.
2026.06.15
All sounds, all memories have vanished, and every attempt to preserve them has failed.
We are here now, and we will have been here.
Photography is a reality more real than reality itself, and so is recording.
Recordings capture the words we never knew we said — or perhaps the words we never said at all.
Press play, wait, and you will hear the voice of the past.
Close this page, and everything disappears.
I need no tape to prove any of this.
Only my complete erasure proves that I lived.
2026.06.10
This is the artist statement I wrote on 2026.06.10.
The idea that photography is a reality more real than reality itself — and so is recording — came from some of Susan Sontag's works (On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others). The thought that recordings capture the words we never knew we said — or perhaps the words we never said at all — is mine, and it came from something that happened when I was experiencing We Will Have Been Here with a friend: a friend heard his own voice through the loudspeaker, including words he had never said and I had never heard.
Time is what matters most here: choose time for your space.
I originally planned to set up three such systems in the school's hall, with slight differences in delay time between them, but overall around 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Because one class period at our school is 1 hour and 30 minutes — this is the cycle of this space.
The cycle of time, yes, the cycle of time.
This was one of the concepts I was most fascinated with at the time: standing on the beach by the sea, watching how one wave catches up with another, how one cancels another out as it retreats back into the sea — as waves of different cycles phase in and phase out, you can see the positions where they converge and cancel each other shifting accordingly: thus emerge tides of different positions, different intensities.
I stood on the beach, waiting for the largest tide to wash over my feet, waiting for the smallest tide to vanish into the distance.
This is the origin of my obsession with time, memory, and cycles.
Another crucial aspect is volatility.
Compared to the reels of tape left behind by I Am Sitting in a Room, the data in the buffer is undeniably extremely volatile.
Stored in RAM, difficult to preserve — once the system is shut down, it disappears permanently, and the original data is repeatedly overwritten in each write cycle.
I need no tape to prove any of this. Only my complete erasure proves that I lived.
Back then I was someone difficult not to notice, and I tried to rid myself of this trait in a destructive way.
Nevertheless, this aspect of the work's design and philosophy is undoubtedly something that can and should be criticized.
The day before yesterday I watched Nuestra Tierra — even though I had always known, when these specific events were laid out before me, I couldn't help but be shocked: so many people have been disappeared.
Not everyone exists in our mainstream narratives and society, and their erasure is something I cannot accept.
Viewed in this light, my dreams and fantasies of being forgotten undoubtedly seem rather... privileged.
Making art is too hard.
2026.06.15
I always thought this was a very sad work... whether because of where it came from, or because it never received the understanding and recognition I had hoped for. But in fact, it was only while I was sorting through the performance photos that I remembered how much fun I had that day. Maybe many things do not need to be so sorrowful, and do not need to be so complicated...
2026.10.09