Foreword

Motivation:

Improvisation is my main method of making art, and the concept of nature is central to my art in that regard. I mainly use bodily movement to practice improvisation, but I also employ my knowledge of visual art and media art. I have been making site-specific improvised performance since 2015. Since then, I have gradually been incorporating sound art in my performances, in relation to the concepts of movement and space. I am also starting to explore the form of dance theatre, using sound within a more theatrical setting. I am not a sound artist, but a performance artist exploring ways to use sound as a vehicle for understanding live performance through the concept of space, both natural and conceptual.

My experimentation with movement for sound is mainly related to the improvisational properties inherent in the notion of sound. Sound requires movement and is intrinsic to the space it comes from. It is an experience uniquely within that space, and thus never repeats. In contrast, each performance of music and dance (as artistic products) is regarded as a reiteration, independent of the space or the location.

Our bodily sensing is a natural phenomenon. However, our cognition of the sensate experience aims at defining (thus, fixing) the experience within a language, e.g., music or dance. As we learn the languages of dance and music, we learn to categorize the integrated sensorial phenomenon, which we initially experience as a whole, into different concepts. We no longer see or hear, but look for what we expect to watch and listen to in the frames of the languages we have learned. Bach is always Bach, however or wherever it is played. 

Sound, while it is defined by the characteristics of the space, and is thus close to the natural state of sensing, cannot avoid linguistic registration; it becomes ‘ambulance sound in Paris’ or ‘ocean sound’. Thus, when we describe nature or natural phenomena, I question if we are actually sensing unhindered by our linguistic registration. 

Learning about sound art, I have become aware of the politics of language in art. Dance and music are languages, and they use movement and sound as raw material. They are accessible only to those who understand these languages. Sound and movement, however, are for anyone with relevant physical faculties. 

Sound art requires a sense of composition, just like any other kind of art made through human intention. However, unlike music, which is available primarily to those familiar with its conventions and vocabularies, it is not a language; rather, it is available to anyone with the intention to listen. 

Merging sound art and improvised movement, I explore the boundaries between sound and music, and between movement and dance. I foreground the awareness of space, where all those things that we identify as sound, music, movement, and dance are happening. 

In conventional dance performance, the definitions of sound and movement are predetermined and separately treated. Incidental sounds, such as breathing, stepping, falling, etc., whether created by the performers or the space, are filtered out by the audience’s ears, and are not regarded as part of the work. During a live performance, in theory, things can always go ‘wrong’; or, in other words, anything can happen. 

I plan my performance, having improvisation as part of the plan and leaving room for unpredictability. I use naturally generated ‘incidental’ and ‘wrong’ sounds as the audio component; I incorporate those unanticipated sounds as an integral part of the performance, rather than a byproduct. 

I use the performance space as an instrument (metaphorically), and movement is determined by the shape of the instrument setup, as specific movements are needed in order to generate sound. Conversely, the sound is determined by my improvised movement within this frame. I investigate the architectural structure of the space, which defines the texture of the sound generated within it. I employ various elements of the set, such as mobile objects, for additional sonic experimentation. 

I hope to expand the audience’s perceptual attention and direct it to their authentic experience of the space through sound and movement, which are unique and ephemeral in essence. I explore ways to remove the separation between sound and movement and to enhance the experience of space, in which sound and movement are happening in correlation, as a whole.

I take the space where sound and movement are happening as the anchor point for my inquiries. I examine the state of my presence in the space, while listening to and gazing at the space that holds the sound and movement. I try to identify the relationships between the two sides of the same perceptual phenomenon, sound and movement, and reconcile them with my understanding of the world. I try to reestablish a physical relationship within an unprejudiced human mind.

History:

I was first introduced to sound art while studying Interactive Art in Canada. My focus was live dance performance, and I was collaborating with artists who were specializing in soundscape/ambient sound and noise music. However, we were responsible for our designated medium without crossing over into each other’s genres. At that time, a lot of their processes seemed to involve many specialised technologies, which were well beyond my training.

I became interested in sound art during my artist residency at Yatoo (www.yatooi.com) in 2016, when I was collaborating with a UK sound artist, Simon Whetham (https://www.simonwhetham.co.uk), to create a site-specific, improvised performance. I danced to his live sound. In November 2019, I reunited with him in South Korea and experimented with my voice work and his sound artwork. In a departure from conventional field recording and playing ambient sound, he introduced different ways of hearing the existing sound, altering the way that the sound is captured and played back, based on the architectural and situational characteristics of the space, rather than specialised technologies.

Since then, I have studied sound art with the UK Sound artist Ray Lee at the Seoul Circus centre in 2017, and the Spanish composer Carlos Suarez at AADK Centro Negra (https://aadk.es/?lang=en) in Spain in 2018 and 2019. I am particularly inspired by AADK’s approach to sound art. They aspire to nurture the creation of contemporary art within the context of local culture, as opposed to bringing contemporary art made for city dwellers to the locals. And sound art was their main vehicle for localization and decentralization in creating contemporary art.

The political aspect of making contemporary art reoccurred during Katie Duck’s improvisation workshop (https://summerimpro.com/archive/) in Amsterdam in 2019. The workshop was created as a platform for artists to gather and instantly compose choreographies intended for live public performances. The performances emphasized interdisciplinarity, combining dance, text, music, voice, and other means. They were intended to create independent arts projects devoid of the competitive spirit now common among artists.

Me Entiendes (https://vimeo.com/328190218) was my first attempt to use sounds generated by my dance movement as part of the content of my performance. 

In October 2019, I created the first segment of No Man’s Land, as part of Üle Heli Sound Art Festival in Estonia.

Through a program offered by Blackout Art Society (www.blackouttheater.com), I received a mentorship from Canadian composer Edgardo Moreno (www.musicamoreno.com) in 2022. This year, I have received mentorship from Simon Whetham and Edgardo Moreno.

I am currently trying to understand the relationship of sound and movement, beyond human conceptions of what they are, with Japanese musician Tamura Ryo, who is based in Seoul, South Korea. We did our rudimentary research in 2022 in Seoul, South Korea. We questioned the nature of sound and movement in terms of art-making, going beyond the artificial boundaries between the two, set by cultural dichotomies, such as sound vs movement, or music vs dance. We concluded that space was the origin of both sound and movement, not the performer nor instruments/objects. Our research encompassed the cultural differences between West and East, our conception of death in relation to art, and more.

We plan to further develop our study in the spring of 2024. Combining discussions and in-studio practice, we try to locate the primordial state of hearing and moving at the very moment when they are generated: the pure physical mode prior to adulteration of their essence through language. In addition, I will study Buddhist drumming at a Buddhist temple in South Korea.