Son[i]a #320
Ji Youn Kang
![Son[i]a #320](https://img.macba.cat/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/ji_youn_kang_-_rewire_20180407_-_peter_balkema_002.jpg-1280x853.jpeg)
The Hague-based composer and performer Ji Youn Kang feels comfortable being labelled a noise artist. After all, she tells us, “pure sound does not belong to my world, noise does”. Space and site-specificity play a vital role in her work, which is based on a two-fold approach to sound: she takes into account both its musical qualities and how it relates to a particular space. Having composed many pieces for the 192-loudspeaker Wave Field Synthesis System (which she gives workshops on at the Institute of Sonology) and other spatial sound systems, such as the Pentacle 15.3, her multichannel pieces focus on the relationship between musical and physical space.
In this podcast, Ji talks about Korean ritual music, perfect 5ths and nature, resonating objects, noise, self-built instruments, uncertainty and tension, Wave Field Synthesis, and strategies to engage online audiences in meaningful communication.
Playlist
01 – 3’09” ‘Mechanical Breathing’
02 – 12’53” ‘Dong-Nae-Gut for WFS system’ (binaural recording)
03 – 31’48” Sonic Acts 2019 performance for Pentacle 15.3 (binaural recording)
04 – 10’58”, 58’47”, 63’22”, 65’05”, 68’16” ‘Rolling Stones’
Music by Ji Youn Kang. Co-produced by Lighthouse (Brighton). This podcast is part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
In PROBES #37, we consider the revolution ushered in by the thermionic valve and, in particular, the disorienting but transformative changes electrical amplification brought into a world until then predicated solely on acoustical laws. We then examine the cybernetic entanglement of its mirrored portals (the microphone and the loudspeaker) through the generative instability of feedback which, it turns out, has accessible expressive powers...
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with sound artist Ji Youn Kang that we were unable to include the first time around.
Arthur Sauer about Wave Field Synthesis
Arthur Sauer, co-founder of The Game of Life, the world's only mobile Wave Field Synthesis system, talks about immersive sound, spatial electronic music, and other applications of Wave Field Synthesis.
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Hugo Esquinca
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