41°C in Beijing, driving from the already remote 798 Art District near the East Fourth Ring Road to the Sound Art Museum on the edge of the East Sixth Ring Road. As the navigation announced the approaching destination, a sign reading "China·Songzhuang" suddenly loomed by the roadside. This suburban district of Beijing, once and still a gathering place for contemporary artists, lies just ten kilometers east of Hebei's Yanjiao.

Stepping out of the car, the chirping of summer insects echoed through the heatwaves. Despite it being the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, the sprawling compound housing the museum was nearly empty of visitors. After all, the venue had only just opened in time for International Museum Day, and the scorching heat was enough to deter even the most determined travelers. Yet for those who overcame these obstacles, the Sound Art Museum promised an overwhelming display of meticulously curated exhibitions and a richly layered exploration of sound culture—one that would leave visitors marveling at the boundless possibilities it could cultivate.

Over two decades ago, American gallerist Jack Tilton chose Songzhuang as the site for an international art center, funding residency programs for renowned global artists. The building, then named "Gatehouse, Tongxian," was designed by the now-celebrated Iranian-American architect Nader Tehrani and Venezuelan-American architect Monica Ponce de Leon. Conceived as a massive stone compressed into form in an instant, as if sculpted by vacuum extraction, its exterior was clad in Flemish brick, creating an elegant and solemn texture. Completed in 2003, it won numerous awards for its avant-garde departure from traditional architectural typologies.

In 2010, due to the construction of Luyuan North Street, the Gatehouse faced demolition. A man named Hong Feng spent half a year moving it 34 meters north, preserving this legendary structure of Beijing's suburban modernity. Hong Feng, a native of Tongzhou (where Songzhuang is located), was one of the founders of the Songzhuang Art District and former deputy director of its cultural cluster management committee. A longtime advocate for China's contemporary art ecosystem, he established the China Songzhuang Art Festival and the Beijing Songzhuang Art Development Foundation—the latter now the organizing body behind the Sound Art Museum.

The relocation of the Gatehouse seemed almost miraculous at the time. After the move, it was renamed "Ruogu Lou" (若谷楼). Over the past decade, this seed has grown into the 8,200-square-meter Huaigu Lin Art Garden, with 6,400 square meters of exhibition space. Its scattered buildings now house the museum's various functions: the permanent exhibition "Sound Hub"; the temporary gallery "Sound Art Space," currently hosting the retrospective "Echoes: Thirty Years of Sound in Chinese Contemporary Art"; the container complex "Sound Life Center," planned to include "Sonic Childhood," a "Sound Therapy Room," the educational space "Multi-Sound," a live music venue, an artist residency, a pigeon whistle base, and a rooftop garden (currently showing the "Heaven and Earth" sound art exhibition); as well as the café-bar "Share Bar" for small performances, the design hub "Share Lab," the restaurants "Big Red and Purple" and "Xuhuai Lou," and courtyards and groves for outdoor sound installations.

Creating such a cluster-style museum, especially one pioneering a focus on sound—an auditory/tactile rather than visual art—required not just Hong Feng but also co-founder Colin Siyuan Chinnery (秦思源). His grandmother was the renowned Republican-era writer Ling Shuhua (1900–1990), author of Ancient Melodies, and he contributed to the restoration of her former Beijing residence, now the Shijia Hutong Museum. There, in 2013, he created an annex dubbed the "Sound Museum" by netizens, showcasing over 70 recordings of old Beijing hutong sounds he had compiled. Some of these now feature in the new museum's "Old Beijing Soundscape" section. In 2019, Chinnery launched his long-term art project "Sound Hub," exploring the relationships between sound, society, and memory. By 2020, he and Hong Feng had joined forces to prepare the Sound Art Museum through three tumultuous years.

Beyond his illustrious career—graduating from SOAS in Chinese language and civilization, working at the British Library, the British Council, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, and the Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair—Chinnery is first and foremost an experimental sound artist. The future "Sound Archive" in Ruogu Lou currently hosts three of his works: Echo Chamber (2022–2023) on the first floor, Chair Sutra (2021) on the second, and Flow (2022) on the third, collectively titled "New Sounds of Ruogu—Sound and Cement."

The Sound Art Museum began trial operations in February 2023 and was certified as a "museum-like institution" by the Beijing Cultural Heritage Bureau on March 29. To Chinnery, this certification ensures the museum's public role and future collaborations within the broader museum ecosystem. Amid Beijing's push to become a "city of museums," the museum also bolsters Songzhuang's cultural tourism industry with its rich on-site offerings.

The saying "seeing is believing" might well be inverted here: "hearing is believing." The immediacy and texture of sound offer subtle yet profound sensations that can only be grasped firsthand. Given space constraints, let’s take a whirlwind tour along the route: "Sound Hub → Sound Art Space → Sound Life Center → Ruogu Lou → The Grove."

As mentioned earlier, "Sound Hub" originates from Chinnery’s 2019 art project, now repurposed as the museum’s permanent exhibition. Seven rooms—gray ("Old Beijing Soundscape"), green ("Nature’s Voices"), cyan ("Speech"), blue ("Music"), white ("Music—Hetian Harmonies"), red ("What Is Sound?"), and black ("Sound and Emotion")—form a dazzling, multidimensional sonic journey.

The journey begins here. At the center of this light-gray open space stands a "Welcome Tree" stretching toward a skylight—a composite of Beijing’s most common trees: locust, persimmon, jujube, elm, and crabapple. Low wooden stools beneath it invite visitors to sit as shifting light filters through the branches.

Before the tree, the space immerses visitors in old Beijing sounds via a 12-channel audio system: pigeon whistles, street hawkers’ calls, and seasonal scenes—some already or nearly extinct, like the recordings of the Bell and Drum Towers, which Chinnery captured in near-rescue missions.

The walls feature animated line drawings inspired by Ling Shuhua’s illustrations for Ancient Melodies, depicting scenes from the sounds. Display cases showcase birdcages, pigeon whistles, and street vendors’ noisemakers, including vibrantly painted clappers made from ox bones adorned with bells.

After traversing a short corridor, still carrying the lingering warmth of old Beijing, you step into a dimly lit room bathed in an eerie green glow. The sliding door automatically closes behind you. At either end of the narrow gallery, screens display the icy blue-white landscapes of Antarctica, immediately cooling the temperature in your heart. The sounds of shifting glaciers, the calls of Adélie penguins, the underwater songs of Weddell seals... This 40-minute soundscape direct from Antarctica forms the inaugural exhibition unit of the museum's collaboration with renowned British nature recordist Chris Watson, presenting natural soundscapes from Earth's seven continents. Watson, who conducted field recordings for the acclaimed BBC documentary series Life with environmentalist David Attenborough, has helped create this immersive experience. Equipped with the same professional custom-designed audio system, the Green Room invites visitors to close their eyes and lose themselves in nature's symphony.

Inside the room, a narrow descending staircase leads to a sound therapy chamber currently reserved for special guests. Outfitted with specialized headphones and comfortable recliners, it creates a fully immersive auditory experience. This space serves as a satellite exhibition area for the "Sound Therapy Room" that will be established in the "Sound Life Center." Following the official opening of the therapy room on August 5, 2023, the museum plans to gather cutting-edge sound healing methods from around the world. Current sound therapy projects under development include: binaural beats therapy, a collaborative project with French sound artist Jue Ran*LLND; and ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) micro-sound healing experiences.

Interactive screens display 14 ancient languages from Xinjiang (e.g., Middle Chinese, Sanskrit, Uighur), with reconstructed audio of texts ranging from legal documents to prescriptions. Updated bimonthly, future plans include ancient poetry readings.

Moving into the adjacent blue room, one finds a visitor's upper body enveloped by a massive sea-blue bell-shaped sound dome. The Blue Room contains six such acoustic domes in total. Once inside, visitors are immersed in a 360° surround sound experience showcasing the diverse musical traditions of Hotan, Xinjiang.

Hotan's folk music encompasses philosophical maxims, literary poetry, prophetic teachings, and folk tales, serving as an encyclopedic reflection of local life through the ages. The inaugural exhibition features songs including folk melodies from Langgar and Pulu regions, dutar performances by muqam master Abdulla Majnun, love songs accompanied by rawap in mountainous areas, as well as contemporary interpretations of Hotan folk music.

Adjoining the Blue Room is the soaring White Room, currently hosting the "Hotan Harmonies" sub-exhibition. Music forms an organic part of Hotan's living culture, where natural musical talent enables locals to burst into song at any moment - during gatherings, meals, or casual conversations, spontaneous singing arises effortlessly. A video installation captures four folk artists performing the distinctive "Jumping Goat" form: while playing instruments and singing, they manipulate strings attached to a small goat puppet standing on a drum, making the puppet dance vividly to the rhythm of both music and finger movements.

The White Room walls also display the photographic series "All Things" by artist Zhuang Hui, documenting Hotan's geological landscapes, alongside the paper pattern series "Yakshim/Siz" by artist Dan'er, who creates new designs using traditional Hotan wooden printing blocks on specially layered xuan paper.

The Red Room is undoubtedly the most fun exhibition area for children. Upon arriving, Colin Siyuan Chinnery immediately introduced the young visitors to the "Sound Wave Fountain." He took out his phone and pointed it at a stream of water - miraculously, the screen showed the water spiraling upward against gravity, flowing back to the fountain's source. "Wow! How does this work?" the children exclaimed, crowding closer in curiosity. This fascinating phenomenon is actually a special effect created by the relationship between sound wave frequencies affecting water vibrations and the camera's shooting frequency.

Designed as a small maze with multiple compartments, the Red Room is divided into three thematic sections. The "Production of Sound" section features three units: "Animal Sounds," "Human Voices," and "Musical Instruments." The museum collaborated with professional animation teams to create a series of vivid and educational science animations. The "Transmission of Sound" section showcases interactive installations that visualize sound, including the Sound Wave Fountain, Kundt's Tube, Cymatics - Water, Sound and Laser, and Cymatics - Chladni Plates. These displays use mediums like water, foam particles, sand, and lasers to demonstrate sound vibrations and waveforms. The "Reception of Sound" section presents educational animations and 3D interactive models explaining the structure and principles of the human ear, along with recreations of early recording scenes before the widespread use of electricity, a timeline of recording technology development, and physical exhibits of recording devices spanning from the earliest technologies to modern MP3 digital players.

The journey ends here, with a screen scrolling crowdsourced sounds—construction sites, park frogs, diabolo spins—inviting visitors to contribute their own.

The Sound Art Space showcases contemporary artworks related to sound. Its inaugural exhibition "Echoes" presents six artists' works in paired configurations across three independent galleries (A, B, and C):Shi Yong's Amplified Scene: Crossed Echoes of a Private Space is a faithful reconstruction of his 1995同名work originally exhibited in "45° as Reason." Within this container-like cubic structure lies a 1990s-style two-room apartment completely outfitted with microphones, speakers, and period furniture/decor - including an old television playing Zhang Peili's early seminal work Water - Standard Edition of Cihai Dictionary.In the adjacent gallery, Yin Yi's Waves assembles dozens of black standing fans into a modernist cube. The artist has precisely calibrated each fan's oscillation to create near-perfect wind cancellation, a concept mirrored by the loop of black audio tape encircling the space - this being Xin Yunpeng's Nora's Departure, inspired by Ibsen's A Doll's House.The final gallery features Geng Jianyi's A Complete World, where a housefly navigates like a dimensional traveler through multiple CRT monitor displays. By the entrance, Feng Chen's The Back of Light covers floor-to-ceiling windows - the artist has programmed the fly's buzzing to control the opening/closing of window blinds.

At this point, we still had three exhibitions to explore. Our group followed Colin Siyuan Chinnery as we hurried through the scorching sunlight. Before rushing into the building named "Sound Life Center," Chinnery pointed to a set of solar-powered plastic flower-shaped chant machines on the steps: "This is one of the works in the 'Heaven and Earth' exhibition. This time we've utilized many non-standard exhibition areas to display artworks." Faint chanting emanated from the machines—this piece, titled Will I Grow More Vigorous and Brighter After Seeing Such Sunlight?, was created by artist Cheng Biqing.

The "Heaven and Earth" sound art exhibition was curated by renowned artist Ge Yulu, featuring works by 12 artists/collectives: He Zike, He An, Hu Xiangqian, Huang Xiaopeng, Lin Ke, Chi Shilin, Zhang Yunfeng, Ma Qiusha, Shi Jinsong, Yang Jian, Cheng Biqing, and Polit-Sheer-Form Office. Upon entering the elevator, as the doors closed and the car began ascending, a projector suddenly activated, continuing to play Hu Xiangqian's earlier work Workers' Song I: Night (2012) on the closed doors. The footage showed a group of actors, much like visitors crammed into the elevator, squeezed into a tiny security booth, using exaggerated voices and gestures to mimic operatic performances.

Exiting the elevator, a silent video work on the wall caught my attention: Ma Qiusha's Star (2013). Flickering points of light repeatedly pierced the darkness—it documented the artist's process of using an electric mosquito swatter in a summer night's grassy field. The description read: "The moment insects collide with the high-voltage wires, brilliant sparks burst forth, their tiny lives extinguished as darkness swallows them." Though the sound of current passing through organic bodies was barely audible, with each "starlight" flash, I could almost hear the lethal "lightning" crackle in my mind.

As we left the Sound Life Center and headed toward the opposite Ruogu Lou, my peripheral vision caught sight of fitness equipment in an open area nearby. Upon closer inspection, this was Polit-Sheer-Form Office's National Fitness (2014). Often humorously dubbed the "F4 of Chinese contemporary art," Polit-Sheer-Form Office (short for "Political Pure Form Office") was founded by Hong Hao, Xiao Yu, Song Dong, Liu Jianhua, and Leng Lin. For this work, they repainted standardized fitness equipment—ubiquitous in public squares and residential complexes nationwide—in their signature deep blue, transforming them into readymade sculptures for visitors to admire or use. Though seemingly silent, this piece instantly conjures the slogan "National Fitness" in many minds—and when visitors begin exercising on them, the familiar creaks of mechanical friction resurface.

We finally stepped inside this legendary building, which essentially serves as Colin Siyuan Chinnery's personal exhibition space. On the first and second floors, the roaring sounds from two audio installations created a reverberant soundscape. "Can you feel the sound penetrating your body?" Chinnery prompted. When we reached the more intimate top-floor space featuring a third work utilizing ultrasonic waves, he added, "Now do you sense the sound entering your head?"

This profoundly embodied experience became most immediate with the second-floor installation Chair Sutra. A circle of seemingly ordinary wooden chairs awaited us. But when I instinctively sat down, my body was immediately met with a tingling vibration—hidden speakers within each chair emitted low-frequency sounds that resonated through one's entire physique. "Each chair has a different frequency," Chinnery explained as he watched our group excitedly swap seats like children playing musical chairs. "Arranging them in a circle creates a shared resonance—between people, between sounds."

By this point, our not-particularly-thorough tour had already lasted over two hours, and readers following along may be feeling fatigued. Fortunately, the final exhibition returns us to nature's sounds: New Zealand artist Dane Mitchell's Lost Bandwidth. Scattered among the trees before a koi pond stand a cluster of black loudspeakers—the very source of the birdsong filling our ears. Chinnery noted that bird traps often take speaker form too, since they use sound to lure their prey.

Mitchell (of Aotearoa [New Zealand]/Tāmaki Makaurau [Auckland]) focuses his practice on institutions like museums, archives and libraries that preserve traces of human civilization—and those things which cannot be preserved: spirit, extinct species, ephemeral transmissions. The birdsongs currently playing in the grove belong to ten vanished species, including the Oʻahu ʻalauahio (Paroreomyza maculata) and Bachman's warbler (Vermivora bachmanii). Perhaps the artist intends these irrecoverable voices to remind us: every present moment is future history.

Sound's bodily experience is fundamentally tactile, yet the Sound Art Museum's sonic offerings also carry rich cultural textures that resist reduction to reproducible audio files. To borrow Japanese sound artist Nelo Akamatsu's description of his own work: "Art expands human perception, making us forget our existence, becoming transparent—thus awakening our senses to experience the world more acutely." These senses extend beyond mere perception into emotion, memory, flesh and spirit... If forced to choose the most unforgettable work from this journey, I'd select He An's Intermittent History of Philosophy (2022) from "Heaven and Earth." Using air pumps and firing pins, the artist generates thunderclap-like concussive booms. This near-violent noise actually springs from collective memory, recalling that mysteriously pure yet palpable sonic blast haunting the protagonist of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria (2021).

OUI ART Interviews Colin Siyuan Chinnery
(Co-founder of Sound Art Museum, Artist)

OUI ART：
What inspired your focus on sound research and creation?

Colin Siyuan Chinnery：
It's hard to pinpoint a single moment—it accumulated over time. Specifically, in 2005 while working at the British Council's Cultural and Education Section, I curated a sound project called "City Sonic," inviting UK artists and musicians to Beijing for residencies. Among them, musician Peter Cusack launched Your Favorite Beijing Sounds via Beijing Radio, encouraging listeners to reflect on sound's relationship with personal emotion.

Those collected sounds now appear in our permanent exhibition's "Sound and Emotion" section, and we continue this archival practice. Back then, most submissions were mundane urban noises—precisely what connects us to memory, history, culture, and urban transformation. These background sounds often go unnoticed, but when isolated, they become profoundly moving.

In 2013, when the Prince of Wales Foundation funded the restoration of my grandmother Ling Shuhua's former residence as a museum of old Beijing life (now Shijia Hutong Museum at No. 24), I revisited Cusack's archive while planning the sound dimension. Hearing those ordinary sounds instantly transported me back—revealing sound's magical power to trigger bodily memory, like a time machine to its origin moment.

This inspired me to reconstruct Beijing's history through sound. By letting visitors hear historical sounds, each experience becomes personal rather than objective—an alternative historical perspective. Over four years, I created an annex in 2017: "Sounds of the Hutong" (dubbed "Sound Museum" by netizens). This became the foundation for my 2019 long-term project "Sound Hub," and ultimately, our current Sound Art Museum.

OUI ART：
The Sound Art Museum has presented remarkably rich and multifaceted content since its opening. How would you summarize the vision behind creating this new type of cultural institution in one paragraph?

Colin Siyuan Chinnery：
Sound permeates every aspect of life—what I call its ontological presence. Even silence exerts a direct psychological impact. Our museum seeks to transmit what I see as sound's multidimensional manifestations: humanistic sounds, natural sounds, social sounds, establishing a new kind of sonic community hub.

Simultaneously, sound possesses uniqueness. As numerous disciplines now incorporate sonic exploration, I envision the museum becoming a platform for cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration among sound researchers. Furthermore, sound has embeddability. Amid rapid urban development, we aim to integrate sound culture into urban living, public spaces, cultural tourism and education—precisely because sound, as a medium, transcends educational and social barriers to facilitate communication, thereby realizing its socio-cultural experiential potential.



OUI ART Interviews Dr. Edward Sanderson
(Researcher, Curator and Critic Specializing in Chinese Sound Art and Contemporary Art)

OUI ART：
How do you view the uniqueness of the Sound Art Museum within China's and the international museum ecosystem?

Dr. Edward Sanderson：
Frankly speaking, the Sound Art Museum is truly unique—a uniqueness I believe everyone welcomes. Its existence constitutes a direct response to traditional museums' visual-centric paradigm. This paradigm reflects broader sociocultural preferences for images and tangible objects, which possess defined forms and boundaries that make them easily commodifiable and marketable.

This isn't unique to China—museums worldwide share this visual bias. Of course, sound art does appear in museums and galleries; as a distinct cultural production, its history stretches back to 1920s Europe at least. But the "uniqueness" I refer to stems from sound art's resistance to categorization—it constantly overlaps with performance, video, and digital/media art forms. Moreover, due to the aforementioned visual bias, coupled with sound's ephemerality and site-specific fragility, it challenges conventional art space and market circulation systems.

Yet this very resistance constitutes sound art's value: it compels institutions to develop new strategies for exhibiting and communicating sonic works. The adaptation process fundamentally questions institutional roles, potentially birthing new organizational models. Therefore, this museum's explicit dedication to sound art signals a paradigm shift from visual to auditory, while physically manifesting the discourse around sound presentation. Its establishment is nothing short of groundbreaking—terribly exciting!

OUI ART：
Which exhibit or display at the Sound Art Museum left the deepest impression on you, and why?

Dr. Edward Sanderson：
What strikes me most is the museum's ambitious commitment to education and archiving. This dual mission manifests in multiple exhibits: demonstrations of acoustic principles, historical displays of audio technology, and systematic documentation of regional/ethnic sound cultures. I understand the planned "Sound Archive" will provide permanent research facilities for organized sound recordings alongside related documents, books, and vinyl records.

As a sound art researcher, I'm particularly intrigued by the museum's collection of historically significant sound-based artworks—some dating to Chinese contemporary art's early periods—and its scholarly reconstructions of lost works. Equally exciting are its commissions of new creations. Beyond exhibitions, the compound's live music venues, bars and restaurants could evolve into a dynamic local cultural hub, potentially energizing sound art's development both domestically and internationally.



OUI ART Interviews Ge Yulu
(Artist and Curator of "Heaven and Earth")

OUI ART：
Could you share the conceptual framework behind your curation of "Heaven and Earth"?

Ge Yulu：
The exhibition's inspiration emerged from a mythical space lost to history—one that seemed to harbor both the decadent excesses of earthly indulgence and the sublime purity of celestial paradise. This tension between polarities created an expansive realm for imagination. It might manifest as a solo performance amid urban clamor, a tranquil grove or starry sky concealing interactive elements, or a space that materializes abruptly—whether flashing across screens, exploding before one's eyes, or waiting silently in corners to be activated. Each artwork interprets this concept through its own distinctive lens.

OUI ART：
How do you define sound art within this context?

Ge Yulu：
Regarding sound as the thematic medium, I emphasize its contextual origins over its linguistic qualities. Some works deliver thunderous or even jarring noises that fade as the listener retreats; others remain quiet until visitors physically interact with them; some maintain complete silence, representing sound's absence. Beyond responding to the theme, each installation adapts to the architectural idiosyncrasies of our multi-level venue—shaded groves, flower beds, courtyards, stairwells, elevators, corridors, service areas, and rooftops all become intentional sites. These works demand audiences to actively engage their perceptual faculties, continually negotiating the porous boundary between art and lived experience.