WEBZINE ACC

The theme of the ACC's creation and production,
“Futures of Listening”

The Asia Culture Center (ACC) is an art creation and production organization that explores the contemporary identities of Asia. The ACC pursues to provide an integrated platform where participants from Asia and the rest of the world carry out research, creation, and production by freely uniting and exchanging their ideas. Against this backdrop, ACC Residency plays a key role in art creation and production. It examines the timely topics and selects one as a research theme every year that resonates the greatest significance of our times. ACC Residency, then, illustrates new ideas through the selected topic and presents the result through showcasing after the process of trials and experiments. Not only do we support artists by providing an environment for creation, but also create a wide range of ACC content that suggests new technologies and artistic languages through our daily lives, creation activities, and diverse programs.

The ACC Sound Art Lab focuses on the sound as an intermediary means of artistic expressions among other methods for interdisciplinary art content. Its research and development on sound produces a diverse range of immersive arts and leads to planning of an exhibition for the new auditory experiences at the ACC. The 2023 ACC Residency is carried out in conjunction with the ACC Sound Art Lab, under the theme of “Futures of Listening: City.” The entire process and creations made during the residency program will contribute to the creation and production cycle of the ACC as they will be presented in collaboration with other educational or exhibitions programs of the center.

This year, especially, uses a genre called "soundscape" as a vehicle to research the past and present of Asia and explore the future of Asia. On Jul. 11 and Jul. 12, the 3rd creative support program “Electrical Walk” was held in the ACC, and 8 teams (7 individuals and 1 team with 2 artists) of artists in “Futures of Listening” residency program, and 4 ACC Sound Art Lab researchers came to the workshop to focus on the city. After the workshop, three guests gave a special lecture on “Futures of Listening: City.” Kim Suk-jun, a professor in Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art at the University of Aberdeen, meLê yamomo, an assistant professor of Theatre, Performance, and Sound Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and Christina Kubisch, an electronic music composer and sound artist, talked about and had discussion on the theme. It served as a great opportunity for the participants and the public audience to learn and think about sound art.

Workshop “Electrical Walk”
with first-generation sound artist Christina Kubisch

In 2003, Christina Kubisch started a project called Electrical Walks where the participants can capture the sound from electromagnetic fields by wearing special headphones. The project has taken a place in 75 cities all over the world. Workshop “Electrical Walk” was a part of Kubisch’s project and presented along with Ecki Güther, a sound artist who primarily works in Berlin. Kubisch, born in 1948, is a first-generation sound artist and served as a professor for audiovisual arts in Berlin, Paris, Saarbrücken and Oxford. Her works have been presented all around the world and received numerous awards.

Kubisch’s workshop is about experiencing a new kind of soundscape¹⁾ through the interaction with the electromagnetic sounds of the city. The participants wear special headphones that convert invisible electromagnetic waves into audio signals and walk around public spaces in the city to hear the sound that has not been heard before. Kubisch has been archiving the sounds she collected from different cities. Some of the sounds she collected can no longer be heard from anywhere else. She walked around Gwangju on the day before the workshop wearing the headphones and discovered many sounds of the city. For her, this “electronic walking” is like the act of drawing a map of a place. This map serves like a music score to her. Just like each conductor interprets the same music score differently, the score she creates can be played differently by a listener. That is because each person walks differently and stops at different places. She sometimes exhibits these maps of the sounds. Or, she just simply records the sounds to visualize them.

A different way of listening—walking through the city while listening to the electromagnetic sounds

On the first day of the program, Kubisch introduced her past works and the workshop and invited the participants to perceive listening to the electromagnetic sounds in a new way, the invisible acoustic presence in the city. She said the workshop is less about search for a special sound than an unplanned listening activity. The participants followed her lead to listen to the electromagnetic sounds wearing the headphones as walking to and around the designated places near the ACC.

Artists’ walking with special headphones is performative in itself. They constantly feel passers-by, people on the metro, and the station staff watching them curiously but not approaching. Under this curious gaze, 20 workshop participants got on the metro to hear the different sounds from electromagnetic fields, and got off at Geumnamno 5-ga Station and listened to the sound from a huge digital billboard. The sounds from the familiar billboards were all the same, but the sound of the one Kubisch showed was completely different. It was the sound of something overwhelming, like the immediate rush of a huge wave. Kubisch explained that it had a different sound because it was broken.

We moved to Chungjang-ro by passing through the underground shopping center and went into stores to collect the sound from the security system. Then, we heard the sound of ATMs at the Chungjang-ro post office. The last destination was the EV charging station on B2 inside the old public parking garage. The charging station at the place emitted very rhythmical sounds unlike others because it was manufactured much earlier than the recent ones. Kubisch commented that the sounds of electromagnetic fields could tell the hidden socioeconomic structure of a city. For instance, the security systems give very different sounds whether one hears at a shopping area with small vendors or full of luxury brand stores. The latter has more complicated sounds due to a lot more security systems and a variety of devices like a two way radio security guards carry.

Composing with the hidden electromagnetic sounds of the city

The participants revisited the places they went with Kubisch as an individual or a team and listened to the sounds from electromagnetic fields with headphones. They recorded the sounds that changed as they moved and composed music or created artworks based on what they recorded. Although two days was too short to work on, everyone shared what they created from the sounds as a final activity of the workshop.

One of the artists composed a song by mixing the recorded sounds. Another artist was a composer and said it was meaningful to discover the hidden, unnoticed sound. The electromagnetic sound was never a material for their music, but through this workshop, they thought about various sounds they’d never used but wanted to try using in the future. They also added that recognizing the sound from machines of our time was a productive inspiration for their work. One of the participants commented it was exhausting to be constantly exposed to sounds. Kubisch responded that we need “electrical silence.” Researching and paying attention to so many sounds different from the ones we usually hear could affect our body in a different way from how other sounds affect us. She found Gwangju highly concentrated with electrical sounds and left a memorable question: where is the place where you can find electrical silence in Gwangju?

Getting creative inspiration through the workshop

Matt Gingold (Australia), an artist-in-residency, said the most valuable lesson from the workshop was the inspiration and energy he got from Christina Kubisch herself. He had a huge respect for Kubisch as an younger artist interested in electrical sounds due to her experience in continuous work and creativity. He was grateful that she encouraged younger artists not only to improve technical skills but also to have creative curiosity. He stated that it was valuable time for him to gain creative inspiration from the unexpected encounter with a new sensory experience by exploring the sounds using unfamiliar technology and to receive exciting energy from the artist herself through this workshop.

Moreover, to the question of how the workshop would inspire his creative work, he answered, “I was able to listen to the electromagnetic sounds of the city as an already-living creature in the environment where we build somewhat ‘magical’ relationship with technologies. This will give a new take on my future creative work.”

The final result for the residency program built around the workshop will be showcased on Fri, Nov. 10 through Thu, Nov. 30, 2023 at ACT Studio, ACC Creation. The Sound Art Lab will create content for exhibition or performance through workshops and overseas field trips, and its works will be presented as a permanent and temporary exhibition and at the ACT Festival.