The Baan Bardo venue was launched at Wonderfruit's Decade of Wonder in 2025 as a home for daytime meditations and Buddhist connections via the Dhyana programming from Black Turtle, and by night as the newest permanent structure in the growing ‘Expo Park’ that is the event's site. 

The term “bardo” in Tibetan Buddhism refers to the transitional state between lives, or more broadly, any threshold phase or transition. Appropriately, the building itself moves and transforms as a kinetic structure; it is designed as a space of passage, not permanence.

For Sonic Minds, the Baan Bardo concept formed the backdrop for a collaboration with both Wit Pimkanchanapong's pavilion, and the team behind Dhyana. We wanted to look at how we can use sound to connect deeply with the idea of the bardo, and with the unique dynamic architecture, to create a sound installation that would facilitate deep personal reflections, but rather than listened to over headphones or in some small space, as a soundtrack for this large venue shared by many participants at any one time. 

We started the creative process by looking at how to connect the idea of ‘bardo” with sonic components. 

Bangkok’s central railway station, Hua Lumphong, came up as a place that would lend a fitting palette - perhaps it’s a somewhat obvious metaphor, but the process of boarding a train – and especially the very clear sonic representation of that presented by the ageing stock on the intercity lines heading north from the capital - certainly seems to have become a universal, almost timeless image for moving between spaces in our lives. 

So, we gathered several hours of ambience on the platform at the station, with the waiting trains slowly filling with people, and the announcements for the irregular departures, the joining of carriages, and the slow departures.

Right next to the station is another place with the same name - Hua Lumphong temple, which is also known as the ‘coffin temple’, and accepts donations from visitors and pilgrims towards coffins for those in poverty, and also offers cleansing rebirth ceremonies that can even involve laying in a coffin to take the blessing. The coincidence of such a place that is so rich in imagery of transitions and rebirth was too good for us to pass up, and the temple grounds’ sound world is beautiful, so we collected several hours more of sounds here, including the many bells gently chiming in the wind, the patter of footsteps, the hum of traffic, and spiritual ambience within the grounds.

Having gathered these materials, and with the beginnings of some musical palettes being created from sampling the sources, we went through the process of several conversations with Harry Einhorn [an expert on Buddhism and lecturer in the Buddhist Art Department in Hua Fan University in Taipei + co-founder of the Dhyana program at Wonderfruit.] 

From speaking with Einhorn it became clear that our choices of subject matter in the audio research and building materials did indeed fit the ‘bardo’ concept really succinctly, and not only that but that we would be able to further gel with this by presenting our finished piece within yet another kind of bardo - the transition between daytime meditation and spiritual conversations, and the live performances and DJs that grace the venue by night.

With Einhorn, we looked at references to the bardo in Buddhist practice - and were especially keen to get his thoughts on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The passages within the book walk the reader through not just the most famous bardo  - that of of dying, but also through the process of other in-between states, and  and Sonic Minds’ search for the application of sound for improved states couldn’t have been better served as the original title of the book actually translates to [roughly] “Liberation from the Bardo Through Hearing”.

We took three passages from the book: 

The Painful Bardo of Dying 

The Luminous Bardo of Dharmata 

The Karmic Bardo of Becoming 

And Einhorn carried out readings of them which he recorded and sent to us, along with recordings of his recitations of two mantras:

Om Ami Dewa Hrih

Om Mani Padme Hum

We then went back to the samples we had been developing as musical passages, layers and textures, and worked on a template for the entire piece, which spread out over more than 30 minutes in total. 

We start with the Painful Bardo of Dying, which merges those train station departures and temple bells quite literally, with the vocals filtered as though they are coming through an announcement tannoy. We keep that tannoy for the other two bardo as well, though the balance becomes less processed and more direct as we move from the literal station into the mindspace represented more by music. 

When creating that music, we reacted to the cadences of the voice, and left space to allow the content to sit in with the listener. In between sections there was more of an opportunity to develop musical passages, focused on deeply resonant bass, and filtered high frequencies that feel like they are transiting through the space into some other realm. The tonality, rhythms, and harmony were based on that which was heard on location at the sites we recorded, and lifted in the 432 Hz frequencies to create some eerie drones [a playful nod to the popularity of tuning to this frequency instead of 440 Hz for more of a 'healing tone'].

We play with the kinetic theme via bringing in and out several motifs that enter and exist across the stereo field, and work with the voice across that field as well. 

The mantras work throughout the piece and creep in and out as we journey through the words and the musical sections in between.

Sonifying the Baan Bardo venue by bridging the worlds of the dharma, the novel high tech architecture, and our approach to site-specific sounds as a tool for music and storytelling was an ambitious project, and was successful in achieving that aim of connecting the various strands through a consistent thread. 

The Baan Bardo venue is new, and at the time of development, was not yet available for us to work with to plan, develop, test, and optimize the work. Since this first iteration, we have begun conversations with Wit regarding the potential to integrate purpose-installed speakers into his structure, which could be composed for, and programmed to be responsive, or at least to move somewhat in co-ordination with the sound. This is promising, as the final installation will benefit from some time to mix on location and optimize the listening experience. We found that as a building with a unique form [no walls, and a large soundsystem but one that needs care to fine tune your work for], our Baan Bardo piece’s mix could have been rebalanced slightly.

Aside from that sonically, it was a satisfying project to work on, and the combination of the deeply resonant bass, those site-specific sound sources, and Einhorn reading the passages is a powerful and effective listen, even outside the context of the Baan Bardo venue. 

For our next steps we aim to integrate the following:

We will create a new mix of the completed soundscape that can be encountered as a stand-alone walk through three significant bardo in Tibetan Buddhism

It will be interesting to distribute this as a Sonic Minds release for streaming, and to test iterations of it (i) as it is (ii) with just the sounds (iii) with just the words, and gain feedback as per its effectiveness as a deep listening walk through the passages and their intended meaning for the listener

We will then use this data to inform the future iteration of the piece, working more closely with Wit to devise a truly kinetic and dynamic, multi-sensory listening experience

Over 2025 OIST Sonic Lab has been carrying out experiments testing relationships between our perceptions of sight and sound combined. With the first results set to be processed soon, we will aim to apply these findings in working closer with Wit and his remarkable venue

The challenge of working with an innovative and ambitious space like Baan Bardo has been rewarding, and we hope, has begun to plant seeds for a deeply immersive Sound Mind experience that we will be able to develop further over the coming months.