YANG MING HEART BEATS

Birds gradually emerging at dawn, afternoon winds passing through grasslands and forests, and quieter sounds becoming perceptible after dark collectively reveal the mountain’s slow and continuous rhythms.

Exhibition Context

YANG MING HEART BEATS, the third micro-exhibition presented at the Yangmingshan Experimental Mountain House, approached Yangmingshan through sound. Responding to ongoing discussions around quiet trails and natural soundscapes, the exhibition brought together sonic perspectives on earth, fire, wind and water, revealing the mountain as an environment shaped by volcanic terrain, ecological activity and continual change.

Within this curatorial framework, Jez Fang made 360-degree environmental recordings at Dream Lake, Lujiaokeng Creek and Mount Huangzui. Recordings gathered across different hours and seasons were edited into a stereo headphone work, allowing each visitor to encounter details of the mountain that are often obscured by visual perception.

Field Recording Across Time

The recordings were gathered at different times of day and across changing seasons. Light, temperature, humidity and animal activity continually altered the acoustic character of each location.

Recordings from Dream Lake, Lujiaokeng Creek and Mount Huangzui were not presented as three separate landscapes. Water, wind, birds, insects and surrounding environmental sounds were edited into a continuous passage through day, night and seasonal change.

Rather than reconstructing one fixed moment, the composition brings together fragments recorded at different times, creating a condensed and continuously shifting experience of mountain time.

360-degree Recording and Headphone Listening

The soundscapes were captured with a 360-degree microphone, preserving environmental information and spatial relationships arriving from different directions. The recordings were subsequently edited and presented through stereo headphones, placing each visitor within a focused and relatively isolated listening environment.

Headphone listening reduces the perceived distance between the listener and the recorded landscape. Wind, water and living sounds move close to the ears, while details originally dispersed throughout the mountain environment are brought into sharper focus.

The Mountain’s Time

YANG MING HEART BEATS considers how a mountain reveals its own temporality through sound.

From a visual perspective, a mountain may appear stable and motionless. Sustained listening reveals a landscape composed of continuous activity: wind changes direction, water responds to terrain and living beings call across distance.

The work invites listeners to temporarily leave the human scale of time and encounter the mountain through its slower, continuous pulse.

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