Hum Doom

HUM DOOM is an interactive sound installation that stages the stock market as a ritual instrument. The work uses Feng Shui as spatial logic and places it in tension with contemporary financial speculation. Real-time and historical market data are translated into an unstable sonic system. Volatility is not explained visually; it is experienced as pulse, pressure, interference, and rupture. A custom synthesizer sonifies live trading data from NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD in relation to the S&P 500, while also folding the structural shock of the 2008 global financial crisis into the present tense of trading. The work is activated through audience participation. Visitors rotate a physical dial using slow circular gestures reminiscent of Tai Chi. Each gesture disturbs the current sound field, detunes the system, and opens a different acoustic route. Shaped by both the speculative rise and crash of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (2007–2008) and recent public rejection of metaphysical market forecasting in Chinese regulatory discourse, Hum Doom repositions the market as both algorithm and ceremony.