“Sounds of machinery operation recorded in Hongseong”

The interview begins with your own experiences with sound. Tell us about a time in your life when you heard a sound that was important to you and that you've never forgotten.

My mother was a piano teacher, so I was exposed to a lot of piano sounds, both good and bad. I've heard the piano sounds so many times that I'm sick of it. I used to run away because I didn't want to learn. But it helped me get used to the Western musical scale. I became interested in concept of Soundscapes in the late 1990s. I've been recording with a DAT recorder for about 25 years. I have a lot of memories of field recording. It was a very special experience for me to go from pointing the microphone at my mouth to pointing it at other people and the world. There are also sounds that I recorded while traveling in Egypt and Greece around 2000, When I listen to them, the memories of that time come back to me, and I think it's very special to record sounds. Another memory is that I went to Busan and recorded the voice of Shin Myeongsuk, a Gayageum player. He was the last direct student of master Kang Tae-hong. While interviewing her, I learned about how the spoken word was an important form of transmission in Korean music and how it changed during the Japanese colonization. That interview led me to work with gayageum player Ko Jiyeon about Gayageum and oral notation of korean music.

In several previous interviews, you have told that your identity as a musician is your basic attitude. What is your opinion of a musician's attitude or perspective?

I don't think music can be done alone. Sometimes I do it alone with the help of a machine, but music basically presupposes being together, and I think there is the most ideal possibility of collaboration in the form of a band that I experienced at that time. I was very impressed by the way I communicated and matched through sound when I was in a band. I think I realized that there's a real essence of art, in that you're not doing it alone and you're not doing it for yourself. The fair relationship that doing band music was also good. The bands often have a very unique form of collaboration that divides income equally with a fair position. Afterwards, the experiences of having a fair conversation outside of the rank will be reflected. I also realized and learned a lot from band musician’s attitude that things like the unstoppable madness of running to the end are really important for an artist.

In the interview video for the Artist of the Year exhibition at MMCA, you said that you are making one work for the rest of your life. On my way back home after saw your exhibition, I listened to <Wonderbird> 1st album again, and I heard the title of your work in the lyrics of a song. I felt like I vaguely understood what you were saying. You've been doing a lot of work on "the other" and "the stranger," is that a theme that you'll carry with you for the rest of your life?

So far, I've devoted a lot of time to the theme of the stranger. It's all about the rigid Korean society. Korea is a very closed society towards strangers, and it seems to be heading in a more closed direction, so I can't help but keep talking about it. No matter how much I talk about it, it doesn't change, so I'll try to stimulate it more, so I went to robots, but I'm not sure if it works. Robots will be more and more present and will be like our neighbors. Right now, we have robot vacuum cleaners and restaurant servers, but I think in a few years, we'll have various robots in our homes and live with a pet robots. I think people can easily give affection to robots, because they listen to me and do what I tell them to do. Anyway, I think this topic of exclusivity of korean society is something I will continue to talk about. Of course, i can talk about other topics as well.

Senior musicians who have been active in the popular music scene, including the indie scene, often become producers and creators or work as music directors for movies and TV shows. There must have been many such colleagues around you. But you chose to be a more experimental artist. I saw an interview that you always wanted to break away from the rules of the mainstream, so I wonder what kind of thirst led you to become a artist.

Sometimes, it's a kind of virtue to keep staying there, repeating what you’re doing like a master or human cultural asset. But I think that’s not my way. I think great musicians have always tried to go beyond their limits. Most of them died early, but I think it was because they exploded while trying to go beyond something. I don't want to live my life repeating what I've done before. I think that's the spirit of music, the spirit of rock.

You studied about technology in music. What sparked your interest in technology rather than traditional composition or performance?

I used to experimented with music that combines technology, such as creating electronic music with computers. Then I wanted to study it more systematically, so I went to study abroad. But when I got there, I realized that such music is already become an established part of the Western contemporary music scene. So I was a little frustrated with that kind of thing. It didn't suit my temperament. I wanted to do something that would expand and broaden my skills in a different direction, STEIM in Germany gave me that experience. The department I was in used to be called ‘Image and Sound’, but it was renamed ‘Art and Scene’. At first, it was all about visual and auditory work, and then it was a time when synaesthetic work combined with technology was in full swing, so I think I was naturally drawn to that kind of work.

You worked as a hardware engineer at STEIM and have been working on robots for a long time. It seems like a very difficult hi-end technology. However, when I take a closer look at your work, I get the feeling that you use easy-to-find materials and accessible technologies. Can you talk about your perspective on choosing materials and techniques?

The range of technologies is endless and it's impossible to study them all. I've been working with technology for about 20 years now, and I still have a long way to go. But what I'm trying to do is not a feast of technology, I'm trying to touch people's hearts, and that doesn't just happen with technology. Whether it's an exhibition or a performance, it's about how the different technologies come together and how you can bring it back to a controllable level. I'm also interested in education and sharing knowledge, and I try to design things so that the people I'm working with don't have to have a technical background to be able to look at it, make it, and repair it. It's also about making it accessible to people and leaving room for them to do something with it. Of course, there are some technologies that are not easily repairable, like location-based headphones. In any case, I think it's more important to use the right technology in the right place at the right time to express yourself.

In 2021, you worked on sound for children at the Busan Museum of Art. I'm curious to know what you thought about when working on sound for children and what your experience was like.

Listening is something that requires training, and music education includes how to listen to sounds. But I get the feeling that children these days are losing the ability to listen faster than we think. In a workshop once, I had a child listen to a sound recording from mountain ‘Jirisan’ on headphones. When I asked him what he could hear, he said ‘nothing’, even though it was nature sounds of dogs barking and birds singing in a remote village. Even for a child, that sound had already become something that could be ignored. The child was in the upper elementary school, but by that time, they have already lost their original senses of hearing due to media exposure and education. So when we were working in Busan, we targeted younger children. I used multiple speakers to create ambisonic sound for them. They were more attentive than adults. I thought that younger kids' ears are still open.

Next question is about field recording. I know you always take a recorder when you travel, but what is the moment when you turn the recorder on and what are the sounds you encounter that are worth recording?

I seem to respond most to the sounds of nature. In nature, I constantly feel like a child again. I feel like a little kid. When I see a bee around a flower, I'm recording it. When I see a waterfall, I'm recording it. In nature, I keep my microphone open in that state of mind. In some places, you can hear the sounds of nature even in the city. For example, I've recorded the sound of water in Taiwan, That's the sound of water dripping from the air conditioner. It's very hot in Taiwan, so they have air conditioning in every house, and the sound of water dripping sounds like a characteristic sound of that city.

Many contemporary artists are using their own techniques and materials to explore their own issues and questions. Recently, it seems that sound as a technique and material has been clearly recognized in contemporary art. You are also often introduced as a sound artist, do you think there is a role for sound in art and questions that can be better asked?

I think sound is the opposite of visuals. Sound enters us in a different way than visuals. It engages the mind more directly. It doesn't go through a filter or a device that you create in your head, it just comes in like this. Also, there is a language barrier between people, but sound has the potential to communicate something important that words cannot. Sometimes what you can't say is very important. In the creative process, I often wonder what’s the point of being good at speaking is. I think sound has the power to make people reflect on themselves by avoiding the limitations of communication that words have and the blind spots that visuals have, I think that's something very valid in our time and will become more and more important in the future, so I think there will be more work on sound in the future.

Are there any particular sounds that you think are noteworthy at this era, or that you've been paying attention to lately?

There are always 3D printers running in my studio, and lately I've been listening to them and thinking about that sound. Depending on what shape you print, the movement of the motor changes, and it becomes patterned, creating a rhythm. The sound and rhythm are different when printing a round shape than when printing a square. I've been listening to them almost all day, so now the sounds they make sound like labor songs. I'll have to work with that sound someday.

We have final question. It's a question that requires a bit of imagination, If you had a microphone that could record any sound coming from yourself, what do you think it sound like?

Whistle, or maybe a gloomy humming.