May 4, 2003 at 9 PM
MELA Foundation Dream House
275 Church Street, New York
MELA Foundation presents the world premiere live performance by Jung Hee Choi of her Composition in the style of La Monte Young’s 1960 sustained friction soundsin a setting of RICE, a video sound installation, incollaboration with Marian Zazeela’s environment, Imagic Light, on Sunday, May 4, 2003 at 9:00 pm, in the Dream House, 275 Church Street, 3rd floor, New York, NY. Concert Admission $18; $14, Seniors and Students with ID. The video sound installation will be open on Fridays, May 9 through June 20, from 8 pm to 12 midnight. Admission $4.
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. It is not a repetitive optical pattern but a process in time that reflects the self-organized formation systems used by all living things in nature to create structure.
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 recorded sounds. 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 world premiere live concert performance, accompanied by the multiple overlays of the pre-recorded audio environment.
The video and sounds are produced independently and have no relation except my intention to exploit the phenomenology 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 as 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 spirituality 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 Choi’s Rice images obtains a rare synchronicity, offering new levels of perceptual manifestation.