Watch A4’s video interview with  András Blazsek, intermedia artist working with sound, sculpture and installation.

The native of Dunajská Streda worked at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong from 2019 to 2021. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Media Studies at the University at Buffalo, where he is conducting doctoral research in data-driven sound modeling and sonification. The quadrophonic soundtrack Sky Bends Dark is made from the sounds of the Mangkhut super typhoon and freely available solar radiation data captured from 16 September 2018 to 12 June 2019 in Hong Kong. The temporal data are used to process the frequency components of the storm’s sounds and to express relationships between isolated events; the start date of the dataset corresponds to the date of the typhoon, while the end date refers to a cross-sectional point in the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests. The timeline of solar values manifests as fluctuations in sound intensity, reflecting the elemental and political rhythms of Hong Kong.

The video is produced by A4 as part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union and supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council and Bratislava City Foundation. The video was created also by volunteers, as part of a project supported by the European Solidarity Corps program.

Video: Eduarda Palmeira & Paula Díaz & Amelie Pret
Interview: Anete Bužoka