“Ruins of Voices” is the second work from Zafka’s project called “Everyday Life Alchemy: Sound Imagination, Sound Writing and Self-Revision” begun since 2013. The 1st work “Parasitic Life/Sound” was exhibited in 2013. The objective of the entire project is to constantly self-reflect, self-revise, re-imagine and rebuild the individual’s daily life world, through exploring emerging sound recording and listening new practices and rethinking on the topic of relationship between daily soundscapes and self building.

“Ruins of Voices” is interested in today’s rapidly growth of grass-roots sound recordings in the social media networks. In recent years, the development of smart phones and mobile Internet has empowered the ordinary people to create new sonic selves though exploring and using sound media in daily context. Technology has changed the behaviors of daily recordings, listening and sound interactions, and thus now is also showing an unprecedented new social media soundscape and an emerging new sound culture. Wandering in the digital space, the artist listen and collect a variety of online grassroots sound recordings, and practicing sound writing, observing various sonic selves, and digging into the mechanism of forming sonic selves. Focusing on the recordings clips about everyday objects, intimacy relationship, role-playing, daily mood narration, emotional games and language exercises, the artist is particularly interested in how people create, presentation, listen to and have dialogue with diverse and floating sonic selves.

The work is presented in the form of sound theater. Sound theater is a black-box theatre that includes installation, video, text and sound media. Based on the continually growing, floating and discarded sonic selves, the artist aim to create new forms of listening experience to discuss the relationship between daily soundscapes and sonic selves in today’s tech culture. In this exhibition, the work will end with a live sound theatre performance in the opening day.