Sound installation for Halloween Rave w/ Angela Liu & Sapphire Ketchup 2024

<My Intrusive Thoughts Sounds Won Today>
Co-hosted by Angela Liu and ASTROJOKE, this scavenge-and-hunt game challenges participants to engage in a playful battle against intrusive sounds dispersed across the venue. Equipped with a soundbox, players must search for its epicenter to release its sounds. The game encourages exploration of unconventional spaces—the loft, dancefloor, shelves, toilet, and even behind the fridge—transforming the environment into an interactive soundscape. Once players locate the soundboxes' sources, they confront their own “intrusive sounds” in a playful duel.

Rooted in the childhood prank game of using sound effects—such as farting, screaming, or sudden noises—this experience evokes surprise and astonishment. In the original version, soundboxes were remotely triggered, leaving targets bewildered and searching for the source, unaware of the mischievous controller in the prankster’s hand. This dynamic exposes a pitfall common among professional sound designers: the tendency to overanalyze the interface mechanisms of sound technologies while overlooking the fundamental purpose of such games—to provoke collective emotions of surprise and delight through unexpected structural twists.

The experience also draws on Mark Fisher's eerie theory, wherein sounds emerging in unexpected or “wrong” places—like toilets or within the players’ own hands—generate an uncanny sense of mystery. This sonic dislocation triggers a tantalizing desire to maintain the play, blurring the line between anticipation and disturbance. Ultimately, the game reveals the power of sound to disrupt spatial and temporal expectations, fostering an immersive, communal engagement with the eerie and playful nature of sound.