Heu Hsu
07 / 10 / 2025
PHOTO / JANE TREIMA
On the shelf, books are silent;
in the making, alive with sound.
Ink explores the permanence of printed matter and the temporality of digital media. Discarded risograph ink tubes and recycled printing pipes reveal the unheard sounds of the bookmaking process, resonating and murmuring softly.
The voices carry fragments of conversations with Terry Riley, Akio Suzuki, and Ken Terui from my book, Sound Chronicle (2023), interwoven with the rhythmic hums of printers, ‘emm’ soft choir, sharp slices of paper, metallic resonance of the drying rack, and quiet labor of binding.
Once printed, there’s no longer Cmd+Z.
How did the idea of Ink come about?
The idea began with thinking about a sound installation that could work in the loud environment of a book fair. I knew I wanted to use waste materials from printmaking and the sounds of the materials, either live or recorded. One night before sleeping, I clearly saw the visuals of one speaker cone emerging from a risograph ink drum. From there, the project developed into using discarded ink tubes and cardboard pipes as listening vessels, where audiences can lean into in a noisy environment.
How did the sound installation evolve from Tallinn to Helsinki?
Ink evolved based on observing how people interacted with the piece. At Tallinn, five tubes had abstract sounds, and one main tube had a longer form narration of voice fragments leading to a musical composition. However, people have short attention spans in public spaces. Instead of having a linear narration with a clear beginning and end, I developed the piece into an interweaved form, where people can discover stories through different tubes, tuning in and leaving at any time.
Also, visually, the ink tubes blended in too well with the colourful bookshelf at the Design Museum, and the idea is very new, so people didn’t realise there was a sound installation. At Pp. Bookstore, the tubes were sticking out instead of placing inside the bookshelf.
PHOTOS / HALIFAX ART BOOK FAIR
The most interesting part was exploring space within waste and mono. In other areas of my work, I have been using different types of spatial audio, such as wavefield synthesis and ambisonics to create spatial compositions, which relies on a large number of speakers. Here, with one speaker cone inside a long cardboard tube, the shape and material itself created rich reverberation and a sense of space. Also, working with waste materials shaped my process and outcome differently. In contrast to buying new materials that are instantly available, gathering materials around Helsinki requires patience, chance, and time.
I would like to continue exploring the intersection of sound art and book art, and experimenting with text-based narratives in diverse forms. I have worked with the sounds of typewriters and the tonality of paper. I’m planning to delve deeper in material resonance of bookmaking materials. Also, working with sound installation in public spaces is interesting for me, especially the unpredictability of how people interact with it and how the piece can morph into a different direction that surprises me.
PHOTO / OFEM UBI
Credits
Fair Enough Art Book Fair
Museum Bookstore of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, for providing space
Pp. Bookstore at House of Text (Tekstin talo), Helsinki, for providing space
Rooftop Press, Helsinki, for recycled prints
Uniarts Helsinki and Aalto University Printmaking Workshops, for risograph ink tubes