Rings.. Through Rings: Reactivating Hong Kong’s War-Time Historicity Through Ubiquitous Music Practices

This paper explores how second-wave ubiquitous music (ubimus) practices can reanimate Hong Kong’s military and colonial histories, which have become absent in urban development. By transforming archival cartographic data of Hong Kong’s wartime sites into laser-etched discs to generate layered sonic textures, the paper introduces an evolving sound art project—Rings… Through Rings (2025)—aiming to reactivate the collective consciousness of the city’s historical sites. Through this project, participants become “audience-performers” who shape the sound via physical gestures and interpretive playback using turntables and laser-etched discs. The work integrates sonic elements such as field recordings, composed material, ensemble improvisation, and real-time electronic music, all dynamically responding to audience actions, thereby treating physical heritage as an open and recursive becoming through ubiquitous musical practices. Lastly, this paper reflects on the social and cultural implications of this approach, arguing that ephemeral data, embodied listening, and open participation constitute an alternative ontological configuration of ubimus as memory, understood as an evolving, participatory practice of sonic recollection.