Re: [-empyre-] Hi from Seoul.
Hi Mathieu,
Actually, on the quote you might look into Lautréamont.
A French/Korean piece isn't as likely as a French/American piece, such as
this recent piece we did for the French poetry review Chaoïd:
http://www.yhchang.com/TRAVELLING.html
On your comment about jazz being eternal. In a previous e-mail, Kim Machan
made an interesting comment that we failed to respond to at the time:
"As you don't date your works and there is a sense that the site does not
have a 'history', only a present, could it be that it has a form in the
present tense that means it can change, and has no obligation to stay in the
original form?"
Unconsciously, we may be trying for an eternal present. If so, it may be
because the Internet demands it and allows for neither the past nor the
future.
Digitalization has made the update become a money-making tool. It has also
made us feel more alive. To update is to say Hey! There's more! Come and get
it! Or rather, I'm not going to let you forget me!
The Internet exudes the new. The Internet means living in the present, being
a part of the times and the scene. It's very superficial and mind-numbing.
Here in Korea, people are online all the time. We call the mobile phone a
hand phone. The reason for the name is obvious -- because everyone carries
it in their hand. What they're holding is not just instant communication but
instant life, like a warm, pumping heart. The hand phone here is your life,
lived in an eternal present.
And as everyone knows, the hand phone is becoming like a 32-tool Swiss Army
knife, what with its camera and MP3 player. More essentially, it mediatizes
your life lived in the present. Instant messaging, e-mailing snap shots of
yourself to your boyfriend riding on the No. 6 line while, on the other side
of the city, you're riding the No. 3 line, updating on the go your mini-home
page -- it's like sitting in one of those chic Paris cafés that has wall
mirrors reflecting your beautiful image to yourself and to everyone else in
the café: it's intoxicating, it's invigorating, it's glamorous. It's like a
movie camera laterally tracking your every step and projecting it to
everyone.
"New media art." People say it will get old. Yes, of course, but only when
something more vital and new than the Internet comes along. Until then,
whether we use jazz or electronic or pansori, whether we update our work or
not, it will be doomed to live in an eternal present.
Young-hae and Marc
On 5/4/05 11:06 PM, "Mathieu O'Neil" <oneil@homemail.com.au> wrote:
> Hi guys
>
> Thanks for your disquisition. As for your quote on chance / surrealist
> / subconscious creation, it's Breton or Dali or Magritte. Might even be
> Duchamp. But we well know it's all complete tosh anyway as you said to
> someone else that you in fact painstakingly accord the text to the
> sound.
>
> In a spirit of reconciliation, I want to suggest a new category:
> French/Korean. You obviously speak French so you surely could find a
> few fast-paced or mournful accordion ditties to accompany / lead (yes?)
> a tale of love and loss. My pleasure.
>
> Now; I understand that you don't want to discuss your work in too much
> detail (or too seriously) because that would risk draining the life and
> poetry out of it. So let me offer the following theory: apart from the
> distinctive identity it helps create, and apart from speed / rhythm,
> the jazz you use nicely contrasts with, and complements, the flashing
> texts and symbols because it is organic, originally pre-digital, and
> also clearly from a different era, hence currently incapable of
> becoming outmoded as (say) a more contemporary electronic track might.
>
> Mathieu
>
>
> On 04/05/2005, at 11:46 AM, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES wrote:
>
>> Hi Mathieu,
>>
>> Music is a funny thing. It can make everything seem different, better,
>> more
>> emotional. It can change the mundane into the exceptional. It can make
>> something, a place and a person, become memorable if not unforgettable.
>>
>> Background music, in a movie, a waiting room, or an elevator, adds an
>> element of complexity to what would otherwise be just a visual
>> experience.
>> The moment we realized that the Web could be an audiovisual
>> experience, we
>> couldn't figure out why anyone would skip the music. O.K., you'd skip
>> it
>> because the file would be too heavy. For us, though, since we believe
>> that
>> music is like a drug that makes everything better -- even art; O.K.,
>> maybe
>> some art is beyond redemption -- we were willing to sacrifice other
>> minor
>> things, like images.
>>
>>> From your comments, it seems the music in our work has succeeded in a
>>> few of
>> these ways. It has made the text seem better. It has persuaded you
>> that it
>> was really, thoughtfully coupled with the text. That's good, and we're
>> happy. Thanks for sharing this with us.
>>
>> An on-the-spot survey of the 59 pieces/versions on our site shows that
>> 44
>> songs are "Black American,", 10 are "Korean/American," and 5 are "White
>> American." Those numbers will, in the coming months, tip more toward
>> "Korean/American," since YHCHI has and will continue to make its own
>> music.
>>
>> For instance, here's one of our new pieces that we invite you to
>> see/hear
>> for the first time online:
>>
>> http://www.yhchang.com/SUPER_SMILE.html
>>
>> We thank CACSA, in South Australia, and its director Alan Cruickshank
>> for
>> inviting us to show the piece offline.
>>
>> "How does the music we choose or make influence the ideas?" Well,
>> first of
>> all, there aren't any ideas in our work -- at least not if we can help
>> it.
>> O.K., a few slip in here and there, but we're trying our best to avoid
>> them.
>> CUNNLINGUS is an exception -- but then, we didn't write that piece,
>> the Dear
>> Leader did. We don't work with ideas. We're not smart enough to do
>> that or
>> to think that our ideas can interest anyone. We work instead with a few
>> images that pop up in either of our heads, then we run with them, and
>> in the
>> wrong direction, unless we make a mistake. Ideas in art are boring,
>> from
>> what we've seen. Incoherence, confusion, wrongness, accident,
>> stupidity --
>> especially stupidity -- these are the elements of our work. It's fun.
>>
>> Who said "Beau, comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection
>> d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie"? "Beautiful, like the chance
>> encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table"?
>> Anyway, that pretty much sums up how we put together music and text.
>>
>> What saves the patient from sure death is the same thing that saves a
>> painting: the frame, or, in our case, the digital frame, the browser
>> window
>> and the computer screen. In both cases, the frame makes everything so
>> convincing.
>>
>> As for http://www.yhchang.com/URGENT_REQUEST.html, well, we're a
>> business.
>> We're trying, like a lot of people, to make money while we sleep. To
>> make
>> our investment work for us. Etc.
>>
>> Young-hae and Marc
>>
>>
>>
>> On 5/3/05 5:41 PM, "Mathieu O'Neil" <oneil@homemail.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> In a roundabout way, I was getting at the music, rhythm of your work.
>>> I
>>> was wondering how you saw it in relation to the text - contrast,
>>> background/foreground, distancing; also the specific pieces you use
>>> are
>>> very "Western", black-american, ex-hipster forms. How do they relate
>>> to
>>> being Korean, or in Korea? And how does a particular musical piece
>>> influence the ideas expressed? (I'm assuming the music comes first,
>>> may
>>> be wrong.)
>>>
>>> Also: I went and had a look at your site and saw a piece I didn't know
>>> - "Urgent Request" - which nicely satirizes the net spam scams - yet
>>> poses the question of how net artists make a living... seems to be a
>>> new positioning of your own economic situations?
>>>
>>> Mathieu
>>>
>>> ps. It's probably obvious but what the hey: I also find your work very
>>> satisfying in many ways.
>>>
>>> On 03/05/2005, at 1:37 PM, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Seoul isn't interested in jazz -- unless you consider Kenny G as
>>>> jazz.
>>>>
>>>> For our money, Korean musical genius is in "pansori" and "pungtchak."
>>>> Their
>>>> sounds, unique and unmistakable, invite improvisation and soulfulness
>>>> on
>>>> famous standards such as "Arirang."
>>>>
>>>> Young-hae and Marc
>>>>
>>>> On 5/2/05 10:32 PM, "Mathieu O'Neil" <oneil@homemail.com.au> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Uh... jazz? What's the be-bop scene like in Seoul?
>>>>> Cheers
>>>>> M
>>>>>
>>>>> On 02/05/2005, at 6:07 PM, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks, Michael,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We're open to discuss anything with anybody -- oh, except for sex,
>>>>>> politics,
>>>>>> money, ourselves, Internet technology, critical theory, including
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> global
>>>>>> versus the local trans-anything, post-everything, deconstruction,
>>>>>> nomadism,
>>>>>> gender, C, C++, Maya, claymation, GATS, intellectual copyrights,
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> latest North Korean test missile. Shoot.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Young-hae and Marc
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>>
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