Tape Music is a participatory performance in which a complex sound work is produced in real time, a form of collective intelligence within which the autonomy of each individual is maintained. Mimicking the mechanical process in which magnetic tape is conventionally read by the recording head to produce sound waves, here a long ribbon is instead handed directly to a group of participants sitting in a spiral circle, who are invited to improvise a recitation of the phonetics meticulously embroidered onto it.

Initiated by Lin Chi-Wei in 2004 as a practical tool for collaborative sound composition, the original work was inspired by Dadaist/Futurist soirées and Taoist ritual chanting. The system has continued developing,  using different modes of encoding such as graphics ,scripts and knots. The Tape Music had its very first live-installation in 2012 Shanghai Biennale, where each day public sessions were led by museum workers. In Busan, alongside the performance itself , A series of artefacts from Tape Music’s classic version are shown. Among them are the scores , the mandalas ,the video documents and the very Tape running back-and-forth between a paire of reels, just like an old-fashioned tape machine does.

Sponsored by : National Culture and Arts Fondation