October 14, 2005 at 9:30 PM
RICE will be telecast on Friday, October 14 at 9:30 pm on Mantra TV, MNN Channel 57-TWC and Channel 109-RCN.
Choi’s May-June 2003 presentation of RICE video sound performance and installation set in Marian Zazeela’s Dream House Imagic Light environment was chosen as one of The 10 Best of 2003 in the December 2003 Artforum.
Choi has written:
“RICE contains abstract and non-objective images and sounds. The video is a realization of ever-changing sustained images. There can be an ever-larger number of fluctuations of ever-smaller amplitude. Unlike a repetitive optical pattern, the RICE images are a process in time that reflects the self-organized formation systems used to create structure by all living things in nature.
The work was inspired by the visionary artists, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. For the music, Composition in the style of La Monte Young’s 1960 sustained friction sounds, I used a cooking pot as a resonating body and set it into vibration through circular motion with a wooden rice paddle. In the audio installation the audience hears the amplification of multiple layers of the sounds which have been pre-recorded. Through amplification, the higher partials become more clear and audible. This unconventional instrument generates harmonics in systems of both rational and irrational intervals. I perform in a state of focus on the universe of the sound, allowing the vibrations to materialize with a minimum of manipulation. I will use the same instrument and technique in this live concert performance, accompanied by the multiple overlays of the audio environment.
In Western classical music, variations and development of thematic and motivic structure are usually precisely notated. As a result, each performance will be substantially the same. However, both the video and audio elements of RICE have a similarity to Korean and Indian traditional music, jazz, and the work pioneered by Young, Terry Jennings and Terry Riley in the early ’60s, in that the material in each of
the media is created through continuous subtle variations improvised in real time. Compared to the precisely notated approach, this can produce performances that are recognizable as the same work, but sometimes quite different from each other in detail.
The video and sounds are produced independently and have no further relationship other than my intention to exploit the inherent nature of the media. When presented together, they resonate with a highly metaphorical sensibility. Over periods of time, relationships gradually emerge: the audience can experience the precise synchronization of video and audio since both elements in the piece traverse a reciprocal universality, and the human mind constantly seeks logic and the interrelationship of information. This work invites the audience to explore their own inner space and share an exalted state of coexistence. The environmental aspects of the work will be sounding before the audience enters, then the live performance will begin—and end. The environment will continue.”
In Zazeela’s environment Imagic Light, pairs of colored lights are projected on symmetrical mobile forms to create seemingly three-dimensional colored shadows in a luminous field. Within this field, the appearance of Choiís RICE images obtains a rare synchronicity, offering new levels of perceptual manifestation.