Shanghai Frolic

"Using a small Dictaphone I would record to tape my first impressions and contemplations of the city. With an ‘Olympus Trip’ 35 mm stills camera I would also snap pictures. Wherever possible I would stop to investigate and record the ‘music-concrete ’ of the place: from the banging and drilling of the construction to the hooting and tooting of the traffic, from the whistling and shouting of the people to the becking and calling of the wildlife. I would then extract my voice observations and contemplations to produce a book. These first-hand impressions would be translated into both Chinese written characters, (pictographic symbols of spoken words) and Rebus, (a simple pictographic text-based symbol system used for people with communication difficulties in the West)." – Andrew Kötting