Sound & Technology Creative Lab

Improvised live coding performance through the conversation of the performer, sound and audience

<It's Just a Conversation> is a live coding performance involving a performer and a sound apparatus. The performer writes code and shares it with the audience in real time. At the same time, the code is translated into data that can be understood by the sound apparatus. While writing code in real time, the performer talks to the apparatus which answers her with sounds. Their conversation is shared with the audience who can also participate in it. The performance is presented in an improvised way under the theme of “conversation.” By offering sounds audiovisually, the work makes the audience immersed in a different way.

The performer writes code in real time and shows it on the screen. At the same time, the code is translated into data that can be understood by the sound apparatus which generates sounds according to the given code. As the performer sees and hears the response of the apparatus expressing the code audiovisually, she leads a kind of conversation which is shared with the audience as music.

The performance <12 Sounds> focuses on the backgrounds and narratives of different sounds constituting our times. The twelve sounds, which come from twelve speakers respectively, are “sounds meaningful to contemporary musicians.” The musicians gave their sounds to the artist during his research. Using the controller he made, the artist mixes, modifies and connects the twelve sounds. In this way, he composes and performs an imaginary soundscape of our times. Through a code given to each speaker, each sound leads to an interview with the musician who provided that sound. The performance goes beyond just hearing individual sounds and pieces of music to suggest a reflective hearing experience of different contemporary sounds. With this, the artist hopes that the sounds around us become richer and more precious.

1. The interview is basically about the “field recording” of musicians. That is, the artist asks the musicians these questions. What sounds did you hear while you were growing up? Could you tell me about some of the most important sound experiences you remember? What would be the most important sound in your music? Finally, the sound that the artist receives from each musician becomes meaningful as a soundscape collected from them.
2. The collected sounds become the materials and conditions of the sounds that the artist can produce.
3. The twelve sounds are connected to music with a narrative, through the methodology of musique concrète.
4. Each of the twelve sounds is connected to the interview with its musician through a QR code.
5. After the performance, the sounds from the twelve speakers are open to visitors in the form of an exhibition.

An era full of signs of disaster, a world recorded with an illusion of “sounds”

Cho Eunhee has experimented with narratives made with music. In particular, she has done research on spaces and places while recording spaces and objects by means of soundscapes. Before the pandemic, she focused on exploring real spaces and doing on-site research. But after that, she expanded her artistic territory toward people’s inner side, private and intimate spaces and the human body. The performance <Whispers of Objects> is an experiment led by her wish to record the era as best as she can as a musician while passing through the Anthropocene Epoch.

We live in an era full of signs of disaster: land deprived of vitality, flooding rivers, diminishing pasture, melting glaciers and so many endangered species. A “voice without a body” is like a ghost. A sound is an illusion of a being and it meets us in the form of waves through vibration. In <Whispers of Objects>, the sound and voice are main actors and mediators.