Siedl/Cao

2024 – ongoing

workshop/sound intervention performance/field trip

kindly supported from BMEIA Austria, BMWKMS Austria for Culture

Sound Ride is a series of site-specific, moving sonic interventions, incorporating bikes and wind-driven instruments.

The next Sound Ride will be realised during the OffCity Artist Residency in Pardubice, Czechia (2026)

The last 7 Sound Rides took place in Germany (Somaphon Festival in Weimar), Japan (Artist in Residency – Paradise, in Matsudo and in Osaka), Vietnam (in Hanoi, Da Nang and Quy Nhon) 2025.

By weaving a new strand of sound into the auditory fabric of a location, Sound Ride draws attention toward its soundscape and the immediate surroundings. This heightened sonic awareness invites reflection, encouraging participants to rediscover their connection to their familiar living environment. 

Engaging in a conscious sonic intervention sharpens the senses. The familiar becomes unusual: eyes observe more keenly, ears attune to subtleties, and the mind becomes more active and alert. The essence of Sound Ride lies in this intentional shift of perception — using wind-generated sound, created through one’s own movement, as a lens to „see“ the landscape and its inhabitants anew. The simple act of a human body consciously moving through space, actively sensing and responding to the environment, generates a resonance that extends beyond the immediate moment.

The first Sound Ride took place in three Vietnamese cities — Hanoi, Da Nang, and Quy Nhon — where motorcyclists wore helmets adorned with traditional Vietnamese kite flutes. Vietnam, with one of the highest rates of motorbike usage globally, faces significant noise and air pollution in its urban centers, especially in Hanoi and Saigon. The ethereal tones of the ancient bamboo kite flutes stood in stark contrast to the relentless hum of motorized traffic, creating a poetic juxtaposition between the modern and the ancient, the urban and the pastoral.

Sound Ride not only reveals hidden layers of a place but also invites participants and passersby to reflect on their relationship with the spaces they inhabit — and the collective soundscape that shape them.

Photos from the Sound Ride in Hanoi

In this Sound Ride the artists Cao Thanh Lan and Gregor Siedl create a dynamic interplay between the city’s auditory fabric and the organic resonance of mobile wind instruments, reimagining the experience of urban space. 

Together with architect-artist Nguyen Vu Hai who has done research about Hanoi for many years and from different perspectives, Siedl/Cao put together a route that went through some areas of this capital city, where there used to be villages, fields, where kites could fly freely in the past.

By attaching aeolian flutes to their helmets, 20 participants generate a haunting polyphonic drone that weaves through the fabric of the urban cacophony. These two sonic layers act as context for each other, inviting contemplation on ourselves within the city’s rhythms, its hidden geographies, its social complexities, and its historical roots. The flutes act as both instruments and antennas, helping sending and receiving „signals“, „thoughts“ at the same time.

The drone of the aeolian flute is typically found in an agricultural setting in Vietnam. By integrating this rural instrument into the city’s sonic landscape, the artists challenge the notion of escape into nature as the sole route to connection with one’s surroundings. Instead, they invite us to consider how the city itself can offer moments of sonic reflection. 

This work underscores the tension between the modern and the ancient, the urban and the pastoral. In doing so, it reveals the often overlooked potential of sound to deepen our engagement with the spaces we inhabit. By transforming the familiar hum of the city with the timeless drone of the aeolian flute, the artist creates a multisensory experience that resonates with the pulse of urban life while gesturing towards a deeper, more rooted understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

The Sound Ride in Da Nang was a collaboration with A Sông Artist Collective & VCIL Community who designed the route with their local knowledge and care. VCIL Community is a network and community of people who advocate paradigm shift toward a regenerative and well-being society through alternative education. This route reveals how the city of Da Nang has remarkably changed – how newly built Han bridge transformed slum dog areas into valuable real estate, how fishing village and harbour Tho Quang and Man Thai have developed…

The route of the Sound Ride in Quy Nhon reflects how the city of Quy Nhon extends its urban space, how tourism has changed the coastline and life of people in Quy Nhon. The main part of the route is actually the National Route 1D. Not surprisingly but intriguingly the sound riders were accompanied by the unusual rhythmic fanfare-like honk of heavy trucks and the ocean’s ceaseless hymn of eternity.

For Sound Ride by bicycles, Siedl/Cao has been doing research to optimize the design of the aeolian flutes to suit average bicycle’s speed. Above are photos of the flute heads, flute holders designed and 3D printed by Siedl/Cao for bicycle helmets.