In Shanghai’s TX Huaihai Centre, a responsive soundscape reflects the city’s dual rhythm — translating urban structure into feeling.
Our Role Sound Concept, Sound Design, Composition // Commissioned by onformative // Client TX Huaihai Center in Shanghai // Year 2021
The ambient’s aesthetic follows a minimalist depiction of the city — ever-changing between day and night, drawn in grids, light, and shadow.
Each visual mode finds its counterpart in sound: collage-like ambients translate the shifting moods of daylight and darkness.
While the day mode unfolds in soft tones and calm air, the night mode vibrates with energy — fragmented, rhythmic, and illuminated by the glow of urban light.
DAY-MODE
With “Air” as the material for this mode, we designed soft synth pads with a breeze-like behaviour. For this, we focused on the reverberation of the sound by using its decay (reverb tail) as the actual sound source.
Using this small section of the original sound, the collage technique creates a sound characteristic all of its own. As a result of repetitions and extensions of different parts of the reverb tail, the synth pad resembles a calm air movement, thus elevating the visual mood.
NIGHT-MODE
The vivid night mode is visually inspired by urban media facades and colourful neon lights. Thus, the typical hum and buzz of the latter served as inspiration for the material of this mode.
As sonic counterpart to the pulsating character of the visuals, we designed delicate percussive sounds arranged in minimalist rhythms. We obtained the sounds for this through granular synthesis of audio recordings of neon lights, which gives the visuals a sense of physicality.
