"Described by the New York Times as “mesmerizing” and by KoreAm Journal as “totally unique.. ..expect the unexpected,” Korean-American composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Bora Yoon is an interdisciplinary artist who conjures audiovisual soundscapes using digital devices, voice and found objects and instruments from a variety of cultures and historical centuries – to formulate an audiovisual storytelling through music, movement and sound." borayoon.com
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You recently traveled overseas to the GMP Festival. How was the trip? What was your most musically memorable moment?
Performing in Korea at the Gyeonggi Media Performance festival went really well! Upon arrival, it was illuminating to hear from the curator of the festival the impetus to create such a festival, since Sound Art, and Media Art have a large presence, i.e. stemming from the visual art world (sculptures, installations, non-personified pieces) however Media Performance was not nearly as represented. This took place at both the Gyeonggi Province Museum and the Nam Jun Paik Art Center, where the legacy of Nam Jun Paik’s work with John Cage and the FLUXUS movement is a centerpiece anchoring the tenor of this festival. Hence, the acts they booked were illuminating the personified and performative nature of media. The trip was enriching in that it brought together the various parts of my South Korean heritage, in dialogue with the American-born identity that I mainly identify with – and bringing both sides of my identity into a larger conversation about the diaspora, and how Korean artists are pushing the boundaries of media and performance then, and now. |
My most musically memorable moment in this trip was evolving my performance with collaborator and live visualist Joshue Ott (of Interval Studios, Brooklyn, creator of iPhone app Thicket, 3Draw, Variant), and trying new ideas on stage, including a new AR moment with his iPad drawing in 3D in space, and also drawing audio waves. I remixed an LP of John Cage’s Fontana Mix with this experimentation, dropping the needle on the LP in various rhythm patterns, and also slowing down the record, so splicing an already spliced piece, in tandem with an emerging technology seemed to be in celebration of the very spirit that this media performance festival was centered around.
What new ideas are you currently working on in your performance genre?
The new ideas I’m working with in my performance is the idea of gesture, and how gestures already created in performance can be utilized a data set for other expressions (video, AR, triggering other audio effects, etc.) I am also bringing in new instruments I have recently brought into the fold by Critter and Guitari, these pocket piano synthesizers, and hot pink Bolsa Bass synthesizer, and finding interesting ways I can create interesting narratives from these sound beds, sequences, and rhythms – that ultimately tell a story, and using the visualizations to thwart expectations, and also reclaim the toxic masculinity that is so rampant in electronic music (and has been for over 20 years) with music that people may not expect from me as a woman, like super bass-heavy, throbbing music – and also seeing how I might be able to utilize empty lipstick tubes, and their twisting qualities, to control audio parameters, ultimately, in a clever, integrated narrative way with lyrics and words.
What new ideas are you currently working on in your performance genre?
The new ideas I’m working with in my performance is the idea of gesture, and how gestures already created in performance can be utilized a data set for other expressions (video, AR, triggering other audio effects, etc.) I am also bringing in new instruments I have recently brought into the fold by Critter and Guitari, these pocket piano synthesizers, and hot pink Bolsa Bass synthesizer, and finding interesting ways I can create interesting narratives from these sound beds, sequences, and rhythms – that ultimately tell a story, and using the visualizations to thwart expectations, and also reclaim the toxic masculinity that is so rampant in electronic music (and has been for over 20 years) with music that people may not expect from me as a woman, like super bass-heavy, throbbing music – and also seeing how I might be able to utilize empty lipstick tubes, and their twisting qualities, to control audio parameters, ultimately, in a clever, integrated narrative way with lyrics and words.
Of all the works you’ve composed and performed what is your favorite and why?
Recently, I remounted my architectural sound installation “Of Matter + Mass” as part of Princeton University’s campus-wide Lewis Center for the Arts complex opening weekend, where the music department took over the entire campus with a flurry of events, performances, premieres, and site-specific happenings. “Of Matter + Mass” is a durational sound installation that animated the sacred space of the University Chapel (more like a cathedral, considering how enormous and cavernous it is), in the metaphoric body that liturgical architecture is created upon. There is a low heartbeat throughout the entire sound installation, running below a changing soundscape of birds, bees, wind, lapping water, rain, and eventually at night, crickets, mourning doves, frogs, and the sounds of evening. I spent 6 hours in the space, tending to the installation as its creator, and also its vocalist, and in costume, fell into what felt like a medieval time warp – where time was slowed down, space became viscous, and inhabiting a space whose history, acoustics, and spirit is an ephemeral thing, but enlivened through song, chant, and the idea of that chants live within certain hours of the day/night, just like ragas do, in Indian music. I am fascinated by that actually: that different melodies ‘belong’ to different times of day and night, and so it was an enormously satisfying experience to act as a kind of ‘host’, greeting every person who meandered into the cathedral, with song, and soundscape, and a spatial experience of restorative meditation. The world around us is in turmoil, and the ability to create space of sanctuary through sound and spirit was something that I found so enormously gratifying, despite the 6-hour performance. It was an exhaustion that was joyful, and fulfilling, and filled me with great heart for the fact we as artists are able to create, interpret, and share such beautiful moments of suspension, and sound, and song.
OF MATTER AND MASS
https://vimeo.com/237423916 https://vimeo.com/242014360 https://vimeo.com/242012070
You are a doctoral fellow at Princeton. What is the focus of your doctoral dissertation?
The focus of my doctoral dissertation is the idea of Music Composition in conversation with architectural spaces – and how architectural sites can be seen as instruments themselves. It features a telescoping structure starting with unique and unusual instruments exploded beyond scale to be performed at an architectural level (ex: Ellen Fullman’s Long-Stringed Instrument, Ania Losinger’s XALA), to landscape sculptures which sonify the landscape (ex: the Singing Ringing Tree in Lancanshire UK, the Zadar Sea Organ in Croatia, to Lauren Bon’s audio silo in Los Angeles); to environmental sound + light installations which are framing devices which create music from the environment itself (ex: John Luther Adam’s The Place Where You Go To Listen in Fairbanks, Alaska, and James Turrell’s light installation SkySpace which frames the sky through a square aperture, and changes the lights around the aperture to transform one’s perception of that sky.
For my dissertation portfolio, I am putting these ideas into practice, creating site-specific installations for the interesting and dynamic architecture of Princeton’s campus, working on a large-range project to create a motion-controlled sound garden at Prospect Gardens, with double-headed speaker cone trees, which sonify the weather data, as well as the movements of visitors in the garden, via sound and cymatics. Ultimately, the idea of ‘kinetic phonography’ is at the heart of my research: how to capture sound and movement in a unique and dynamic ways, that also have to take into consideration sound and space.
Recently, I remounted my architectural sound installation “Of Matter + Mass” as part of Princeton University’s campus-wide Lewis Center for the Arts complex opening weekend, where the music department took over the entire campus with a flurry of events, performances, premieres, and site-specific happenings. “Of Matter + Mass” is a durational sound installation that animated the sacred space of the University Chapel (more like a cathedral, considering how enormous and cavernous it is), in the metaphoric body that liturgical architecture is created upon. There is a low heartbeat throughout the entire sound installation, running below a changing soundscape of birds, bees, wind, lapping water, rain, and eventually at night, crickets, mourning doves, frogs, and the sounds of evening. I spent 6 hours in the space, tending to the installation as its creator, and also its vocalist, and in costume, fell into what felt like a medieval time warp – where time was slowed down, space became viscous, and inhabiting a space whose history, acoustics, and spirit is an ephemeral thing, but enlivened through song, chant, and the idea of that chants live within certain hours of the day/night, just like ragas do, in Indian music. I am fascinated by that actually: that different melodies ‘belong’ to different times of day and night, and so it was an enormously satisfying experience to act as a kind of ‘host’, greeting every person who meandered into the cathedral, with song, and soundscape, and a spatial experience of restorative meditation. The world around us is in turmoil, and the ability to create space of sanctuary through sound and spirit was something that I found so enormously gratifying, despite the 6-hour performance. It was an exhaustion that was joyful, and fulfilling, and filled me with great heart for the fact we as artists are able to create, interpret, and share such beautiful moments of suspension, and sound, and song.
OF MATTER AND MASS
https://vimeo.com/237423916 https://vimeo.com/242014360 https://vimeo.com/242012070
You are a doctoral fellow at Princeton. What is the focus of your doctoral dissertation?
The focus of my doctoral dissertation is the idea of Music Composition in conversation with architectural spaces – and how architectural sites can be seen as instruments themselves. It features a telescoping structure starting with unique and unusual instruments exploded beyond scale to be performed at an architectural level (ex: Ellen Fullman’s Long-Stringed Instrument, Ania Losinger’s XALA), to landscape sculptures which sonify the landscape (ex: the Singing Ringing Tree in Lancanshire UK, the Zadar Sea Organ in Croatia, to Lauren Bon’s audio silo in Los Angeles); to environmental sound + light installations which are framing devices which create music from the environment itself (ex: John Luther Adam’s The Place Where You Go To Listen in Fairbanks, Alaska, and James Turrell’s light installation SkySpace which frames the sky through a square aperture, and changes the lights around the aperture to transform one’s perception of that sky.
For my dissertation portfolio, I am putting these ideas into practice, creating site-specific installations for the interesting and dynamic architecture of Princeton’s campus, working on a large-range project to create a motion-controlled sound garden at Prospect Gardens, with double-headed speaker cone trees, which sonify the weather data, as well as the movements of visitors in the garden, via sound and cymatics. Ultimately, the idea of ‘kinetic phonography’ is at the heart of my research: how to capture sound and movement in a unique and dynamic ways, that also have to take into consideration sound and space.
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What music artists are you currently listening to, being inspired by?
Music I am currently listening to and inspired by, include artists from the Raster Noton German label: Ryoji Ikeda, Ryuichi Sakamoto + Alva Noto, Japanese producer DJ Krush, songwriters tuneyards, Bjork, Feist, guitarist Kaki King, and the great canon of classics by Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, and Steve Reich. Who is your greatest 20th century musical influence and why? My greatest 20th century musical influence… hmm.. may have to be Bjork, in that her career has spanned such an enormously wide range of collaborators, yet she has remained constant in the aesthetic core of her evolution. Her career celebrates such dynamic collaborations, while still facilitating and developing her inner voice and lyrics and truth, and it has been really influential to have grown up with her, in a sense, from a young age since I was in high school until now, and see her evolve as an artist, as a woman, as a mother, as a matriarch and activist for her country, in such graceful and dynamic ways. |
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What do you think about the GOP tax plan to tax graduate tuition waivers/exemptions?
It’s absolutely horrendous. The GOP tax plan will completely decimate transformative graduate level research, and make grad school for the elite and rich, and with absolutely no class or racial diversity. This will create an environment where global scholars will no longer flock to the US for graduate study, and chip away at the integrity of what has made this country what it is. This is a blatant move to start the disintegration of higher education, and we need to fight this thing tooth and nail, before the nihilist notions of our leadership take every shred of progress we have made as a country away from us.
How many events do you estimate you performed at in 2017? What was the most memorable and why?
I would estimate I have performed over 25 events in 2017 of various scale – and perhaps the most memorable was performing at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, this past January, because I was able to arrive early, and create a composition from their entire electric circuitry of the building, using electromagnetic microphones, and also created a 2-story site-specific performance from the galleries, into the Oculus Theater, in the beautiful building created by architect Liz Diller (of Diller, Scofidio and Refro). We utilized the architecture of the building to personify its ‘vision’, its nervous system and circuitry of synapses (electromagnetic recordings), etc. and also got to perform with LA-based theremin artist Armen Ra, and LA-based cristal baschet artist Lenka Moravkova – essentially 2 of the most RAREST instruments you can find on this planet, and to have them in one room, to collaborate with for this performance was an extreme honor and gift.
It’s absolutely horrendous. The GOP tax plan will completely decimate transformative graduate level research, and make grad school for the elite and rich, and with absolutely no class or racial diversity. This will create an environment where global scholars will no longer flock to the US for graduate study, and chip away at the integrity of what has made this country what it is. This is a blatant move to start the disintegration of higher education, and we need to fight this thing tooth and nail, before the nihilist notions of our leadership take every shred of progress we have made as a country away from us.
How many events do you estimate you performed at in 2017? What was the most memorable and why?
I would estimate I have performed over 25 events in 2017 of various scale – and perhaps the most memorable was performing at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, this past January, because I was able to arrive early, and create a composition from their entire electric circuitry of the building, using electromagnetic microphones, and also created a 2-story site-specific performance from the galleries, into the Oculus Theater, in the beautiful building created by architect Liz Diller (of Diller, Scofidio and Refro). We utilized the architecture of the building to personify its ‘vision’, its nervous system and circuitry of synapses (electromagnetic recordings), etc. and also got to perform with LA-based theremin artist Armen Ra, and LA-based cristal baschet artist Lenka Moravkova – essentially 2 of the most RAREST instruments you can find on this planet, and to have them in one room, to collaborate with for this performance was an extreme honor and gift.
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Do you have any big plans so far for 2018?
Plans for 2018 include a Brooklyn Youth Chorus commission for their Silent Voices series, creating a new work for the Smithsonian ensemble-in-residence 21st century consort with video artist H. Paul Moon (Zen Violence Films), performing Sarah Kirkland Snider’s The Unremembered song cycle at the Smithsonian in the same concert, all as part of a larger concert in response to Korean-American artist Do Ho Suh’s memory house structures (on exhibit at the Smithsonian), an artist residency at Arizona State University, and a new 25-minute orchestral commission I will sing and perform with the Albany Symphony. |
Do you have any long-term goals that you want to accomplish in the next 10-20 years?
The ultimate dream project is to create a large-scale instrument-building — a structure which forges together the principles and unique attributes of the large-scale instruments / installations / soundgarden ideas I am currently studying for my dissertation — to create a permanently installed public piazza where the principles of music making are employed at an architectural scale. In this structure, I envision a place where music and sound, the materiality and our interactions with the environs allow people to communicate through the music, over distances, and can be created so people can viscerally feel their connection with their environment, weather, and one another.
The ultimate dream project is to create a large-scale instrument-building — a structure which forges together the principles and unique attributes of the large-scale instruments / installations / soundgarden ideas I am currently studying for my dissertation — to create a permanently installed public piazza where the principles of music making are employed at an architectural scale. In this structure, I envision a place where music and sound, the materiality and our interactions with the environs allow people to communicate through the music, over distances, and can be created so people can viscerally feel their connection with their environment, weather, and one another.
