What is sound?
From within the frameworks of visual and conceptual art,
how can one successfully portray and comprehend sound?
We should begin, of course, by listening.
For this issue of LEAP we have commissioned Lou Nanli
to create Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (Ziming Scroll) Spectrogram,
which invokes the dichotomies of “visual-audio” and “seeing-listening”
to prepare us for such an endeavor.

Employing frequency analysis along a chronological axis, the work transforms
the legendary scroll Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (Ziming Scroll) into
sound, and then visualizes this “ancient” sound as a way of thinking in reverse.
With the original image abstracted into the components of a musical score and
an audio spectrogram as the guiding hand for its composition, the visual gradually
morphs into its aural homologue. Lastly, Lou has structurally re-arranged
the visualizations to create a conceptually new piece of electro-acoustic music.