R for Resonance uses the latest imaging technologies of the Digital Age to evoke another technological breakthrough some 5,000 years – the Bronze Age in Southeast Asia. Through this motif, we seek to tell a story of the region through its climate, music, minerals, technology and histories of social control.

Spanning more than 5,000 years of history, R for Resonance takes as the Gong – a ubiquitous musical (and ritual) object in Southeast Asia – as its starting motif. We begin with the discovery of copper, then the refinement of the metallurgical arts, leading to the perfection of bronze casting and the birth of the bronze Dong Son drum – ancestor of the Gong, emerging at a time when social hierarchies first emerged in the prehistoric landscape of the region. Through the Gong’s passage across time and space, is woven a story of technological progress and its relationship to techniques of social stratification.