http://sonverbatory.blogspot.sg/
ying yin jing DIN! is a sound installation with video component that explores sonic dislocation and re-contextualization through the contraction and reconfiguration of soundscapes that are alien to the presentation space(s). Modes of presentation include the playing of pre-recorded material through PA and other sound-broadcast systems as well as live, real-time processing and presentation by deejays or deejay proxies, sound artists and musicians. Sound material, collected from various locations within the university as well as from other parts of the world, both urban and natural, will be processed and configured with the intent of transferring to the presentation space(s) the essence of those foreign environments and locations. At the same time, some material will remain raw as intact field recordings, only to be re-contextualized through presentation in other locations.
As our creato-researchive interests include the geographics of social networking pertaining to the enviromentics of location and mindset, and performance orientations relative to interactive systems within improvisational structures and environments, ying yin jing DIN! offers both artists and student participants opportunities to exchange trans-cultural experiences and perspectives through the apprehension, transferal and rearticulation(s) of “exotic” sono-systems. Also, pen-jing, bonsai and traditional Chinese garden practice figure into some of our backgrounds and interests, thereby providing us with an opportunity to explore the potentialities of another one of our creato-researchive interests, namely sustainability as artistic tradition and genre.
ying yin jing DIN! uses as a generative system a combination of Futurist sound categorization, and the underlying principles, practices and philosophy of those Asian horticultural disciplines that focus on environment, place and scape as both subject and medium. As a result, contemporary sonic emulations both urban and natural, rather than representations, of pen-tsai, pen-jing, bonsai, saikei, bonkei, suiseki and traditional garden will be reverberate within the presentation space . American muzak and deejay performance practice will dictate modes of delivery and presentation.
Mineralian and vegetational correspondences are applied to technological equipment and sound material. Speakers provide orientation and origin akin to topography and soil; sound operates vegetatively as it grows, fills space, dies and decays. As in pen-jing practice, the interplay of human control and automatonic and/or natural action with aesthetics and environmentics are explored as sound is gathered, cultivated, re-shaped (sometimes deformed) and re-situated in order to contract and exemplify, reproduce and evoke soundscapes specific to places and/or states of mind.
Like the pen-jing or bonsai artist, who, while working materials, is captured according to Chan or Zen practice “in the moment,” the deejay, tune harvester and sound artist, engrossed in the momentum of moment-to- moment moments, negotiate materials in processes filled with problematic inspirations, resolutions and insights . As harmony is sought by conflict in a creato-improvisational process, involving happy accident and Daoist flow, the artist is absorbed in overlapping zones of active and performative meditation, equivalent to that experienced by horticultural artists, as he/she reduces soundscapes to their elements so as to insure transferal of essence and sense of place, as well as signal a return to the original spontaneity of locative flow.
MLuM is (in alphabetical order): Chung Shih Hoh: sound (Singapore); Michael Raco-Rands: sound (U.S.A.); and Marco Schindelmann: sound (E.U. & U.S.A.) Snezana Petrovic & Vid Petrovic: video (Yugoslavia); .
In addition to being a featured artist on National Public Radio programs throughout the U.S.A., MLuM, a Long Beach California based conceptual mock-pop and performance art ensemble, comprised of multi- national artists, has presented works in subterranean and experimental music concerts and sound art events throughout Southern California. With an intercultural and inter-media aesthetic and praxis that can be described as “Weltradau” (World Noise), MLuM takes and makes the “best” out of the “worst” (and vice versa) that various music(s), images, performance practices and sounds have to offer. Organic and inorganic processes, gong-chime cultures, ethnoise and sound mauls (as opposed to mere sound bites) are among its inspirations and references.