Sonic Art Group highlights embodied and relational time—the warmth of physical labour, the rhythm of human gestures, and the irreplaceable value of tactile experience that digital systems cannot replicate.

In an era of digital marketing and algorithmic logic, this zone explores Chu Wing Kee to initiate a conceptual experiment on the monotony of modern consumption. We focus on the ‘Value of Touch and Perception’—a warmth accumulated through physical labor and a form of human resilience that digital logic cannot replicate. Rooted in long-term ethnographic research, the project documents the shop’s manual rhythms: from the physical weight of fetching stock to the systematic labour of categorising thousands of everyday objects using index cards and intuitive memory. These threads transform the shop’s materiality into sensory interventions that challenge the sanitised order of modern retail, highlighting a back-to-basics, people-oriented approach that reshapes our cognition and problem-solving abilities.

Beginning with an auditory exploration of material, Wong Winsome Dumalagan, Chet Pong investigate the acoustic properties of ceramics by recording the sounds of tapping and touching—mimicking the proprietor’s quality-testing methods. By reassembling broken fragments and utilising sonic transducers, they transform the ‘material chorus’ into a tactile sensory experience. This auditory focus extends to the act of consumer ‘selection’ in the work of Pang Chun Fu William. Through an interactive interface, visitors compose arrangements using recorded shop sounds. By paralleling artistic choice with daily purchasing, and storing these compositions on NFC tags, the work challenges our understanding of ownership and the tension between physical souvenirs and data.

The focus then shifts to the operational core. Wu Ho Mui utilises microscopic visual records to center on the proprietor’s hands. Her imagery delicately captures the skilled gestures and traces of movement accumulated over decades. By materialising the abstraction of ‘time’, she prompts viewers to reconsider the importance of human presence, encouraging a deeper gaze and a longer stay within the physical space.

Sing Jantzen Tse examines the shop’s unique labeling strategy, transforming forgotten objects into transparent 3D models. Paired with real-time printed transcripts of store conversations, the work reconstructs a dialogue between the ‘soul-like’ essence of objects and their authentic narratives.

Finally, Vincent Cheung confronts the impact of e-commerce by deconstructing ‘search by image’ algorithms. By highlighting the gap between human visual warmth and machine computation, the work invites reflection on the unquantifiable memories and community bonds lost to efficiency. Together, these responses remind us that in this space, stories are never silent. Reflecting the proprietor’s philosophy, this shop offers more than goods; it offers a soulful human flexibility built on authentic dialogue.