The Power of Babel
September, 2003

At the Mainz City Museum , I made ink rubbings of the Roman steles in the museum collection using the traditional Chinese method of ink rubbing. As in the story of the Tower of Babel which tells of people's tongues confounded by God, the characters from different steles were rubbed without following their order, thus throwing the lines into confusion and forbidding one to read through. At the same time, I recorded the pounding sound of rubbing. The act of pounding equaled to that of questioning, and in turn, the "answer" from the stele, the very "earth," could be deduced from the echoing sound of "Peng, Peng." In the final exhibition, the ink rubbings were hung in midair with a CD player playing the recorded sound of pounding. A video camera recorded live the waveform sound equalizer dancing up and down with the volume and rhythm. The recorded image was simultaneously projected live onto the nearby screen, creating unexpected encounters of visitors with a tower of light now and then.