Creative Spotlight: Episode #179 – Bora Yoon
Bora Yoon explores where the place where music connects to the subliminal creating architectural soundscapes from everyday found objects, chamber instruments, digital devices, and voice. As a composer, Yoon addresses the dimensionality of space and sound in her original works. As a solo performer, Yoon has presented her unique and experimental soundwork ( (( PHONATION )) ) internationally, at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Nam June Paik Museum (Seoul), Singapore Arts Festival, Festival of World Cultures (Poland), Patravadi Theatre (Bangkok), Walker Art Center, Bang on a Can Marathon, TED (Cannes Festival), and museums and galleries across the globe. Yoon conjures a style of sonic surrealism, using unexpected instruments, associations, unusual spaces, and sensory synesthesia. Read below for the full interview…
You have a very unique take on sound. What is your own personal definition of music?
Bora: To me, music is weather. That invisible medium which surrounds us all, and conducts all energy and elements within it, and the medium in which the zeitgeist of a culture, or a movement, or an era, is reflected and rendered visible in hindsight. Music is a form of communication, a nonverbal language, that certainly encompasses sound and noise as music/sound/noise all have the ability to tell a story, set a scene, create an atmosphere, and mood, resonate ideas, excavate memories, and express emotions, tell a story, and paint a sonic picture, or a create a type of sound cinema.
We recently interviewed violinist Anne Akiko Meyers who stated that chamber music was in a decline. Since you explore sounds in that realm as well as technology, what kind of challenges does that present in terms of finding an audience?
Bora: I think we live in hybrid times, where there are forms and industries being redefined, converged, innovated at every turn, so while chamber music in its most classical sense may be on a decline, I think it is slowly finding an expression in other forms, and in conjunction with things like technology, and new performance settings which allows for interesting synergy and exciting potential. I think audiences always respond when music is palpable, visceral, personal, dynamically delivered, and meaningful, so perhaps the challenge lies in simply redefining what "normal" or "standard" means for a chamber music setting, to integrate and take into account modern day standards of connection, multi-sensory performance, and framing of context.
When I say "chamber music" — I also mean it in its most literal sense, that it is performed within a chamber, a room, an architectural structure, that resonates (just as a violin resonates) which is intimate, a blend of many voices, but the individual voices can be defined from each other in the whole. As a site-specific composer/performer who performs within various architectural structures, I am taking the definition and classical form of "chamber music" and applying it to non-traditional instruments and found sounds, along with my viola, voice, and violin — to create a hybrid style and approach to chamber music.
When you first started creating music did you always want to move away from traditional polyphony to create music of sonic pointillism? How did your creative process start out?
Bora: My creative process started out VERY classically and typically Asian (classical piano lessons, Suzuki violin, playing in orchestra, singing chorus with church, etc.). But you have to learn the rules before you break them too. I'm grateful for the solid classical foundation I have, thanks to my tireless mother, which also has made exploration and experimentation all the more interesting and exciting, Eventually, the skill set you learned playing one instrument can apply to another (violin to guitar being both stringed instruments, singing to violin being both instruments that "sing", guitar and piano to percussion being both instruments that gage contact as dynamics and rhythm). I haven't really deviated too much from polyphony — it is certainly the core of my work, as choral music is my first love, and harmony will always be too beautiful to not integrate.
You have worked with poets, to filmmakers, choreographers, and DJ's. Are there any specific challenges trying to bridge your talent across so many mediums?Each medium has its own set of standards, and 'form' — so, if anything, this wide variety of collaborators across many mediums has helped me to apply one skillset to another medium, to surprising effect.
Your creations are definitely genre-bending and leak into experimental constructions. Are there any scenarios or experiments you'd like to execute with your music that you have yet to conduct?
Bora: I'm currently exploring the idea of releasing my next record "Sunken Cathedral" as a series of short surrealist art films, which distill my aesthetic of sound and space within music video form. How we as a society digest music has radically changed – so much so that even though I make records, I myself don't buy records. Hence it seems most apt to release this record piecemeal, with a visually engaging element, which more clearly reflects what my live performance is like, in developing 1-woman show "Weights and Balances."
Other ideas I am working on currently:
- Exploring the performance medium of collaborating with fine art, within a museum and gallery setting to illuminate and resonate sculptures and works within an exhibit to become a performance space.
- Developing a sensor design for musical sequencing in performance via gesture, with artist and programmer R. Luke DuBois, using the Kinect sensor which will allow for a more seamless performance, and exciting possibilities and ideas to stage sonic surrealism.
Could you tell us about Weights & Balances and what kind of message you are trying to convey to the audience?
Bora: W+B is a one-woman show about how the world is held together in invisible knots, and that all movements in the universe are the same, and follow the same basic principles of physics, no matter how small or large the matter. That all is just a matter of scale. Through a series of personal stories, original prose, soundscapes, and music, this is the culminating theatrical work which brings together all my musical history from ( (( PHONATION )) ) which started in 2005, until 2012, bringing back original lyrics, prose, and making full circle all my philosophies as a writer, person, and sensibilities as a composer/performer, together in one show.
What kind of dynamic do you get being on stage by yourself versus performing with a group? Are you able to present a stronger message due to being more focused?
Bora: To me, art is very personal, so the dynamic of performing solo does make me feel able to relay a stronger and more focused message, as it is often times still fresh, and emerging and performance somewhat of a personal dare — but to that same token, it's that much harder, when the only person you have holding you accountable is yourself, so sometimes you can pardon yourself too easily also. There are pros and cons, certainly — and many trade-offs. I am definitely seeking collaborators who I connect well with,
What percentage of experimental sounds and instruments don't make the cut? What kind of sound are you looking for when venturing off into the musical unknown?
Bora: I am always intrigued by new and interesting sounds – but it has to be weighed with the reality of lugging it around. TSA regulations are getting stricter, and sometimes it's just not practical. I will always hang onto a sound, and keep them gathering in the artillery, and bring them out to be featured in the right context, performance space, and setting if it is the right sound / instrument to the work.
Do you have any favorite Asian films?
Bora: Korean film – Mother.
Could you tell us a bit about Sunken Cathedral EP and your creative process behind it?
Bora: Sunken Cathedral is a recording exploring the cyclicality of human expression, tracing the devotional and transcendental properties of early medieval music, in new music today. This recording will juxtapose works, centuries apart, by composers Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), Ludwig Van Beethoven, poet Elizabeth Bishop, with the original experimental music of [myself] and feature selections and choral works commissioned and premiered by the Young People's Chorus of NYC.
I often envision of music as this kind of inextinguishable and evolving force that has concurrently survived by humans for centuries, capturing the essence of expression, communication, aesthetic, intent, and function deemed by each era. My aim, with this record, is to blur the lines between performance and ritual, creating an immersive aural experience, distilling music—new and old—to its purest devotional essence; pairing Medieval compositions with experimental new music, to culminate and converge ancient and modern melodies.
Artistically, and architecturally, "Sunken Cathedral" is designed to be a sonic and subconscious journey through a house – each track a different room, a different hour of night, a different gravity, and energy {the parlor at midnight, creepy basement, kitchen, phantom orchard, balcony with bird's eye view, down the long hallway, through a keyhole}. An exploration of sound and scale, these musical 'rooms' are designed as a metaphor to the body, creating a visceral sensory experience of surrealist sound cinema.
What is the biggest element you include in your show that makes sure the audience can follow your movements, storytelling, and direction of sound. How are you able to create both a good show, and make sure the audience understands?
Bora: I utilize gesture, and facial expressions to connect, engage, and communicate a kind of dance, and nonverbal performance through music, and objects. Also, an element of improvisation and consideration is always necessary, to breathe with the energy in a room, to make the proscenium of performance as porous as possible to become more of an experience.
Lastly, do you have any other surprises for 2012/2013 you could share with us?
In 2013, Sunken Cathedral to release in a series of music videos, featuring the kinetic sculptures of South Korean artist U-ram Choe:
http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/creators/u-ram-choe
Weights and Balances due out in January 2014.
http://here.org/resident-artists/project/weights-and-balances
Collaboration with Chinese choreographer Yin Mei Dance, to premiere at Asia Society NYC, in January 2013.
"Seve Sages of Bamboo Grove"
http://www.yinmeidance.org/
http://asiasociety.org/
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