Along the Xindian River | River Field Recording & Sound Art

Beneath the Surface

Underwater recordings were made across different sections of the Xindian River.

Downstream, low-frequency vibrations from the city travel through the water and merge with bridges, traffic and riverside infrastructure. Around Bitan, the hydrophones reveal dense and delicate traces of aquatic life. Further upstream, currents strike rocks and pass through narrow crevices, creating shifting layers of splashes, gravel and underwater friction.

Hydrophones move listening away from where people usually stand. Heard from inside the water, the river is full of movement, pressure and vibration, along with the leftover sounds of the city.

A field recorder in an open bag and a microphone in a fur windshield on a floating dock beside the river, with a suspension bridge and apartment blocks behind.

A field recorder in its carrying bag on a concrete embankment, facing a green river and forested hillside.

A River Beside Home

Most residents of a social housing community in Xindian arrived there through migration. A familiar song line, “a little river in front of my home, a hillside behind it,” carries a shared, almost unconscious image of an ideal life beside water. The project asks what happens in conscious and unconscious life when people settle beside a river their earlier lives may never have had.

In the first workshop, residents listened together to the underwater recordings, to vibrations and low sounds from deep in the river. Semi-hypnotic guidance set their sight aside so that only hearing remained. They described old and new feelings about living there, then used cards to share their own stories.

Participants wearing headphones sit in a wide circle of chairs in a bright room, with a person standing at a laptop and mixing table at the centre.

A smiling woman wearing illuminated headphones holds a small furry microphone, with other participants seated beside her.

Three participants sit in a row wearing eye masks and illuminated headphones.

A woman in an orange T-shirt and headphones speaks while holding a small furry microphone, seated in a circle of chairs.

A woman wearing headphones holds up a small printed card and looks toward the camera.

The River and Human Memory

The project also gathers songs, stories and lived experiences from people whose lives are connected to the river.

Upstream, along the Nanshi and Beishi rivers, the recordings follow Atayal communities whose ancestors moved along the river about two hundred years ago, settling on flat ground before moving deeper into the mountains to Fushan. They hold homes and hunting life. Daily life follows Gaga, the Atayal ancestral teachings and the norms handed down from their forebears, which guide how people hunt in the field and how they relate to one another and to nature. The recordings also follow weavers who have relearned traditional weaving.

Hunters, weavers, residents and local practitioners speak of the river as a way they travelled, a place where they gathered and worked, and something that carries memory, environmental change and their own histories.

Their voices are part of the landscape. Heard next to the sound of moving water, they turn a name on the map into a place with people in it.

Two elderly men sit in a covered outdoor space during an interview, each wearing a small lavalier microphone.

A woman holds a thin cord to a small bamboo instrument at her mouth, with traditional garments on mannequins behind her.

Close view of hands weaving a patterned band on a wooden loom, with a printed pattern chart clipped beside it.

An elderly woman seated at a small wooden frame stretching red and purple thread, with pattern sheets on the table.

A wooden loom with a half-woven cloth in blue, white and red stripes and bundles of loose thread.

Participatory Listening

In a second workshop, the research was developed into a guided outdoor listening experience using wireless headphones. Participants walked through Wenshan Farm while listening to recordings, songs and stories gathered from the upper reaches of the Xindian River. What they heard in the headphones mixed with the ground underfoot, the plants around them, the wind and their own pace.

A person carrying a microphone rig and recorder walks along a forest boardwalk, with a line of participants behind.

One participant embraces a tree trunk while another crouches on the grass in the distance.

A person in a yellow rain poncho lies on a rock in the grass while another walks away along a path wearing headphones.

Participants sit on a lawn in headphones, hands raised to their faces, with trees and a slide behind them.

A person in headphones works at a laptop on a black equipment case outdoors, beside two microphones in fur windshields.

The walk ended at a viewpoint high above the river. Looking down, participants met the river again, now with the recordings, the route they had walked and the view in front of them all at once.

Three participants in headphones stand at a wooden railing, looking down on the river and valley.

Participants first entered the river through sound and only then saw it from a distance. A landscape they knew well began to show another depth.

At the Mailboxes

For the opening, a postcard from Xindian was delivered to every resident’s mailbox, leading them to a sound installation inside the building. A player was built into the mailboxes, and the sound of water and a shimmering light came from within. The sound carried along the way and drew residents toward it: the river pouring out without pause, joined by the voices of hunters and weavers and by songs. Residents could hear again each fragment that had come down from the upper river. Through the telephone handset on the side of the unit, the same voices could be heard up close.

A cream telephone handset hangs on the side of a bank of residential mailboxes in a lobby, with a black folding chair placed in front.

The opening and closing events sampled river sounds and soundscapes from Xindian into a silent disco for families.

A social housing courtyard at night, with glowing spheres, a draped sound desk on a playground roundabout and residents wearing headphones.

A person in illuminated headphones works at a laptop and mixer on a draped table set on a playground roundabout, with apartment blocks behind.

Moving Upstream

The project has travelled against the current, from the city toward the river’s source. It began with deep listening, with hydrophones lowered into the water and residents listening with their eyes covered. It then moved into the body, as participants walked, sat and lay on the land along the upper river. Each stage led further upstream, to the Atayal communities along the Nanshi and Beishi rivers.

Upstream, the river shapes how people live. Ancestors chose where to settle by following it, hunters read the mountains around it, and Gaga guides how people treat one another and the land. The upper river also holds a story of migration. Atayal ancestors followed the water here about two hundred years ago, much as the residents downstream later arrived at the social housing from somewhere else.

The Atayal language belongs to the Austronesian family, whose languages are spoken from Madagascar to Easter Island, and many linguists trace the family back to Taiwan. Following the Xindian River upstream opens onto this larger history of people moving along water and across the sea. Along the Xindian River is ongoing, and its next stage listens in that direction.