Foreign Bodies (2025)
Artist Taiki Sakpisit
Sound Design and Spatial Composition Worramet Matutamtada

Commissioned by Thailand Biennale Phuket

In Foreign Bodies, an immersive spatial sound environment is constructed through an 11.2 vertical speaker alignment, designed to generate vibrations that travel physically through the bodies of the audience. Sound is not merely distributed within the space; pressure and resonance are produced so that it is felt as intensely as it is heard.

All speakers are concealed within the installation, and the sources of sound are deliberately hidden from view. Through this concealment, spatial orientation is destabilised and certainty is removed. The sound is made to move like a haunted presence, emerging from indeterminate directions and suggesting the existence of another dimension embedded within the architectural environment. The audience is unable to locate a fixed origin and is instead enveloped, absorbed, and physically implicated.

A dense sonic mass unfolds in heavy tidal waves, engulfing the body and recalling the overwhelming atmosphere of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, in which a surge becomes an unstoppable force. Here, sound functions as a tide: it pours across the audience, pressing against skin and bone. History is not presented as distant representation but is embodied as force and vibration.

Spectatorship is transformed into immersion. Rather than observing from a distance, viewers are placed within a charged and infernal atmosphere where history is encountered as lived presence. The installation invites the audience to experience themselves not as detached observers, but as foreign bodies within the historical moment itself.

Photo by Taiki Sakpisit