Interview Lance Laoyan

Lance Laoyan interviewed by Benjamin Earl during the Graduation Show 2021 at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK).

Our Shared Acoustic World

Graduation project 2020-2021 by Lance Laoyan
Audio installation

Limited to our senses, it is difficult for us to comprehend what the world sounds like to a non-human animal. However, research illustrates some harsh realities that ecosystems endure under the pressures of sonic forces.

Our Shared Acoustic World is a five-channel audio installation sounding the ecological impacts of anthropogenic noise on vocal non-human animals. The study is situated in the Netherlands and pays particular attention to industrial and motorised infrastructures, in close proximity to animal habitats, that are notoriously loud and widespread. Through a semi-fictional narrative Lance Gapuz Laoyan highlights the complications that surround the acoustic territories of machinery and nature – where different powers and meanings are entangled in the competition between being heard and being silenced.