Tuning the Space 

4 Dec. 2020 - Informal performance as part of the informal review of the artist residency with the Danish composer Lars Kynde at Inter Art Center (Malmö, Sweden) 

https://tuningspace.weebly.com

https://youtu.be/GO0O0a9NDd8 (actual performance - 15 min.) 

I collaborated with Danish composer and inventor Lars Kynde (https://www.larskynde.dk), at Inter Arts Center (www.iac.lu.se) in Malmö, Sweden, in November 2020. We explored our shared interest in integration of sound and movement, experimenting with overtone sound modulated by bodily movements. 

We focused on space as an organic instrument (metaphorically speaking) that generates sound and movement. We transformed the space into a large mechanical acoustic instrument made of strings, wood, water, magnets, and steel, which I explored in relation to my own body by dancing inside it, altering the tones with my bodily movement. In one sense, my movements were determined by the shape of the instrument setup, as specific gestures were needed in order to generate its sound. In another sense, the music composition was composed and played by my dance within this frame. 

Lament for a Cassette Factory  

November 2019 - Palbok Factory of Contemporary Art (Jeonju, South Korea) 

Exploration of space with voice, sound recording and objects, Voice by Soeine Bac, Video and sound by Simon Whetham

https://vimeo.com/386984778 (edited: 1:15 min.) https:// vimeo.com/386973729 (edited: 11:06 min.) 

I met Simon Whetham during my residency at YATOOi in 2016. Since then, we have collaborated several times. He uses the environmental structure of the space to create sound. We made this sound art performance during his artist residency at Palbok Factory of Contemporary Art in 2019. 

We mostly used environmental sound, employing his audio methods and equipment to capture often unnoticed and obscured sonic phenomena. We made special use of walls to echo, reflect, muffle, and reverberate my voice and sounds from the objects inside and outside the walls. It was windy during our performance, so we used the wind to make or alter sounds. 

Water Storage Tank, Seoul, South Korea 2017  

25 Oct. 2017 - Seoul Street Art Center, (Seoul, South Korea) 

Site-specific improvised performance, Direction & Performance with DigiCue (aka Seung-wan Rhyu)

 https://vimeo.com/240350008 (actual performance – 15 min.) 

We picked a deep underground space at a water treatment station, which ceased operations in 2011, after 40 years of serving the residents of Seoul in South Korea. The station was ready to be reconstructed into a space for producing street art as part of the Seoul Street Art Center, which eventually opened in 2015. 

We chose the site because its massive size seemed to make people forget the world outside. The dark internal space was filled with subtle sounds of the old machines inside, which echoed the fragile sounds from outside, penetrating through multiple layers. The space created another world that was inhabited by those old machines chocking out their last breaths. It was bounded by decayed grey walls, punctuated by bits and pieces of unidentifiable industrial objects, and stroked by the shafts of sunlight that briefly sneaked in through the narrow windows at the top in the afternoon. It was surreal, remote from the world outside. The space felt like it was a living organism with all of its internal organs groaning and murmuring, as if it had known it would soon be demolished and turned into dust. 

Since it was fully alive as it was, the space did not need much of our interruption. Being in the space was an experience on its own. A bit of lingering and titillating was enough to awaken the latent life from sleep. We tried to find the optimum point at which we could awaken it without disturbing it.