[INTERVIEW] Artist traces first sonic encounters between Western, traditional Korean music

Seen above is a screenshot of artist Kim Young-eun's "To Future Listeners I" (2022) on view at her solo exhibition, "Frames of Sound," at SongEun gallery in Seoul's Gangnam District. Its caption reads, "This is a collection of sounds that were anticipated to be forgotten," referring to the first ethnographic recording of a traditional Korean song produced by an American anthropologist in 1896. Courtesy of the artist, SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation

Kim Young-eun's exhibition, 'Frames of Sound,' uncovers sound sources, ethnographic recordings that speak to modern Korea's musical history

By Park Han-sol

Even the feeblest sound barely audible to the naked ear, whether emanating from human vocal cords or manmade inventions, could contain stories of cultural and political history that have been forgotten or even lost.

Artist Kim Young-eun, photo by Chung Hee-seung / Courtesy of the artist, SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation

For years, artist Kim Young-eun has been uncovering such acoustic tales related to Korea's modern history.

In 2017, she unveiled "Guns and Flowers," inspired by the loudspeaker systems that once lined the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between South and North Korea for over 50 years.

It highlighted what she calls the "sonic warfare" waged between the two nations, which bombarded each other with ideological broadcasts ― from propagandist slogans to everyday love songs. Even the seemingly innocent, romantic melodies were engineered as a weapon instilling anxiety and fear among the unseen enemy.

The piece earned her the grand prize at the 17th SongEun Art Award, a prestigious annual accolade granted by the SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation since 2001.

This summer, Kim returned to SongEun in its newly established monolithic building in Seoul's Gangnam District, for her solo exhibition, "Frames of Sound."

It presents various historical moments encapsulating the "first contacts" between highly systematic elements of Western music ― such as ear training, staff notation and international pitch standard ― and traditional Korean music in the 20th century.

Installation view of Kim Young-eun's "Tearful Twist" (2022), photo by Jung Ji-hyun / Courtesy of the artist, SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation

These include the very first ethnographic recording of a Korean song produced by an American anthropologist in 1896 ("To Future Listeners"), and the first Korean classical score to be translated into Western staff notation by a local musician in 1914 ("A Story of Oseonbo").

In the "To Future Listeners" series, Kim presents an intriguing digital performance based on the first recording of "Love Song: Ar-ra-rang 1," captured by wax cylinder phonograph a century ago.

A wax cylinder is an extremely fragile and sensitive material; with the passage of time, the recording preserved on its surface gradually becomes unintelligible.

Using a noise reduction plug-in, Kim attempts to digitally revive the 126-year-old recording, only to discover that the sounds are cut out and fragmented as the software already recognizes most parts of the documented song as meaningless noise.

"The recording is neither a transparent echo of the past nor a perfectly preserved remainder," the artist narrates in the video.

After her unsuccessful digital resuscitation of the song, she then chose to record herself singing the same track on wax cylinder.

"Even though my voice will also fade into another noise in the future, I wanted to at least prolong the life of the original ethnographic recording by allowing people to be reminded of its existence this way," Kim told The Korea Times in a recent interview at the gallery.

It's her way of preventing the century-old traditional sound from disappearing into oblivion.

A screenshot of Kim Young-eun's "A Story of Oseonbo: Sounds Lost in Translation" (2022) / Courtesy of the artist, SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation

"A Story of Oseonbo: Sounds Lost in Translation" is a 47-minute-long journey that begins with the discovery of the first Korean classical score translated into Western staff notation in 1914.

Tracing the tumultuous modernization of traditional Korean music, Kim goes to "gugak" (traditional Korean) musicians, researchers and composers to reconstruct the acoustic information ― from tones to playing techniques and sentiments ― that became distorted or filtered out while being transferred into the Western musical notation of "oseonbo."

She also delves into how Korean music and vocalizations were initially perceived by Protestant missionaries and scholars of the West ― who made comments like "such heinous offences against the laws of harmony" and "seemingly devoid of musical talent" ― until a realization hit them that distinct rules of music unfamiliar to the Western ear existed within the peninsula.

The currently institutionalized musical frameworks in Korea are then a complex result of the West's composer-centric sheet music introduced during the last century, as well as the ongoing musical compromise between the two cultures in terms of temperament, scale and notes.

"This is an unresolved issue still in progress. While one can see my work simply as a lament for Korea's acoustic elements that became lost in history, others can view it as a chance to actively reflect on the current state of traditional Korean music," the artist said.

A screenshot of Kim Young-eun's "Ear Training" (2022) / Courtesy of the artist, SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation

Other stories of first encounters between two cultures unfolded at the gallery are equally fascinating.

During the 1910-45 Japanese colonial era, ear training, in which musicians learn to identify individual pitches, was introduced in Korea's musical education as a military exercise to develop soldiers' skills in recognizing the sounds of enemy vessels and submarines.

The artist herself started making fundamental changes to her creative exploration of "Koreanness" when she emigrated to Los Angeles in 2017 and was now confronted with a question: can there be such a thing as "distinctly Korean" music and sound?

As she witnessed elderly Christian women playing traditional drum music in a tiny Koreatown church and Korean American musicians forming a "samulnori" (a genre of Korean percussion) club, she felt the need to re-examine the country's musical traditions.

Rather than attempting to simply restore or lament the country's bygone music, Kim's projects generate dialogues on how the sonic vestiges of cultural colonialism and Western imperialism found in Korea's musical soundscape could be wielded to produce thought-provoking new creations.

"Frames of Sound" runs through Aug. 13 at SongEun.

A screenshot of Kim Young-eun's "Brilliant A" (2022) / Courtesy of the artist, SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation