RAIN BELL
12 channel sounds
Rain data collected by a sensor in the artist’s ancestral village reactivates a rain-praying bell melted down during the 1958 steelmaking campaign. In digital space, the work speculatively reconstructs the bell’s image and sound.
Concept and Background Research
The project revolves around a bell that no longer exists. According to the memories of elderly villagers, there was once a Dragon King Temple in the village, and the large bell in front of the temple was closely connected to rain-praying rituals and local beliefs. During the nationwide steelmaking campaign of the Great Leap Forward in 1958, the bell was collected as a metal resource and melted down, becoming part of the broader narrative of national industrialization.
The disappearance of the bell meant not only the loss of a material object, but also a rupture in local ritual, collective memory, and the relationship between people and belief. Rain Bell places a rain sensor in the village, transforming rainfall at the site into data and transmitting it through a network in real time to trigger the image and sound of the bell.
In this way, the work allows a disappeared bell to reappear as a networked and temporal presence—when rain is actually falling, its presence can be sensed remotely across different locations.
PROCESS
Exhibition
Goldsmiths, University of London, 2026
13-15 August 2026
Documentary