Eardrum — Shawn Pakhin Tang

Bremen (DE)/Hong Kong (HK)

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Eardrum
2025

Dead coral fragment, vibration speakers attached on thundersheet, duo-sound channel installation

Eardrum is a sound installation that transforms any audio input into a resonant, tactile experience through a percussive metal surface. At its core is a thundersheet—an industrially thin sheet of metal—onto which two vibration speakers are affixed. These transducers convert sound into tremors, turning sonic information into an embodied vibration that evokes the deep, atmospheric rumble of thunder. Sound here is not simply heard but physically felt, absorbed through the trembling surface.

In this iteration, the installation engages with two audio channels derived from video documentation recorded on the island of Gili Trawangan, Indonesia. One audio track captures the ambient sounds of a dumpsite located at the island’s center—a site of waste accumulation, decay, and neglect. The other records the underwater serenity of a coral reef restoration site along the island’s shore—a space of care, regrowth, and ecological intervention.

It acts as the shared membrane through which these two contrasting environments confront one another. The thundersheet becomes a site of collision, echoing the tension between destruction and restoration, contamination and healing. It performs a sonorous politics: the sonic confrontation embodies the contradictions of a nation whose environmental future is suspended between extractive neglect and regenerative hope.

Rather than presenting sound as a neutral medium, Eardrum amplifies its corporeality—transforming it into a trembling political surface. It resonates with the fragility of ecological systems, the violence of waste, and the pulse of human effort embedded within acts of care. In doing so, it listens with the body, vibrating at the frequency where landscape becomes symptom and the environment becomes speaker.

Installation view, Eardrum, 2025, “High Tide Low Current”, Dauerwelle, Bremen. Photo. Hsun Hsiang Hsu.
Close-up view, Eardrum, 2025, “High Tide Low Current”, Dauerwelle, Bremen. Photo. Hsun Hsiang Hsu.
Video clip, Eardrum, 2025. Link: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1072824246
Partial view, Strangers from Beneath the Land and Beyond the Ocean (Biorock Application on Coral Reef Restoration and Touring at the Dump Site on an Island), 2024, “Yours strangers”, Den Haag, Netherlands. Photo. Hsun Hiang Hsu.
Partial view, Strangers from Beneath the Land and Beyond the Ocean (Biorock Application on Coral Reef Restoration and Touring at the Dump Site on an Island), 2024, “Yours strangers”, Den Haag, Netherlands. Photo. Hsun Hiang Hsu.
Video excerpt, Strangers from Beneath the Land and Beyond the Ocean (Biorock Application on Coral Reef Restoration and Touring at the Dump Site on an Island), 2024, “Yours strangers”, Den Haag, Netherlands.
Video excerpt, Strangers from Beneath the Land and Beyond the Ocean (Biorock Application on Coral Reef Restoration and Touring at the Dump Site on an Island), 2024, “Yours strangers”, Den Haag, Netherlands.