Yuga Sonic House

For materializing the idea, I used paper cups and strings to create over forty paper cup telephones which work by transmitting sound vibration along the tightly-pulled strings for the installation. The bottom of each paper cup is connected to a household appliance and serves as both a “microphone” and “speaker,” picking up sound vibrations on one and non-electronically reproducing the sound at the other. The strings intertwined with each other, creating a network that allows acoustics produced by the appliances while they are operating to travel and transmit from one end to the other in a playful way. I chose plain paper cups and colorless string to minimize the visual effect of the physicality of the installation, highlighting the function. The reason why I connect all the strings is to make the network complicated, which requires a certain amount of exploring, listening, and imaging for the participant to find the possible spots where the acoustics are coming from and where they can hear the reflection of sound at its most prominent. By walking around the installation and randomly listening to an unused paper cup telephone creates a fun and unique listening experience which arouses people’s interest in sound.