Flesh of Sound
2015 - 2019
Speakers, wooden walls, archive materials
Dimensions and durations variable
This project evolved through three re-recordings and updates between 2015 and 2019.
It began from an interest in the power of collective voices as an immaterial tool and the re-contextualization of songs through this very tool. Typically, participants in protests use the corporeality and materiality of a collectiv voice to often reposition a song or specific phrase in an entirely new context. Songs sung at protests can become powerful symbols that represent the nature of the protest. While new songs are usually composed for protests, it is common for existing songs to be selected spontaneously and arbitrarily by the demonstrators.
This project specifically references a song that was selected as a protest song through a small, accidental event and gained symbolic power through the collective voice. The event, which occurred during Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, was when someone accidentally pressed the wrong button on a megaphone, causing the melody of Happy Birthday song to play. In response, the surrounding crowd began clapping and singing along, and from then on, whenever the atmosphere at protests became increasingly tense, someone would start singing the “Happy Birthday” song to smother the curses and shouting, thereby shifting the mood.
In this project, the Happy Birthday song begins with the humming of a single person. The humming repeats at regular intervals, and the same voice continues to overlap, gradually forming a choir. This accumulation of a single voice, repeated and superimposed, illustrates how the medium of voice becomes corporeal as a material body and how the context of the song undergoes a transformation.
(KR)
2015 - 2019
Speakers, wooden walls, archive materials
Dimensions and durations variable
This project evolved through three re-recordings and updates between 2015 and 2019.
It began from an interest in the power of collective voices as an immaterial tool and the re-contextualization of songs through this very tool. Typically, participants in protests use the corporeality and materiality of a collectiv voice to often reposition a song or specific phrase in an entirely new context. Songs sung at protests can become powerful symbols that represent the nature of the protest. While new songs are usually composed for protests, it is common for existing songs to be selected spontaneously and arbitrarily by the demonstrators.
This project specifically references a song that was selected as a protest song through a small, accidental event and gained symbolic power through the collective voice. The event, which occurred during Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, was when someone accidentally pressed the wrong button on a megaphone, causing the melody of Happy Birthday song to play. In response, the surrounding crowd began clapping and singing along, and from then on, whenever the atmosphere at protests became increasingly tense, someone would start singing the “Happy Birthday” song to smother the curses and shouting, thereby shifting the mood.
In this project, the Happy Birthday song begins with the humming of a single person. The humming repeats at regular intervals, and the same voice continues to overlap, gradually forming a choir. This accumulation of a single voice, repeated and superimposed, illustrates how the medium of voice becomes corporeal as a material body and how the context of the song undergoes a transformation.
(KR)
#1-3
Flesh of Sound #19
2019
Speakers, plywood wall, scores and news articles printed on tracing papers, wooden frame, sound
5 min
Dimensions variable
Installation View at Visitor Welcome Center, Los Angeles (Photo by Ruben Diaz)
#4-5 Installation View at Art Space Pool, Seoul (Photo by Chulki Hong & YoungEun Kim)