Interview Request NWN 2024

Interviewer : Donghyun Im from NWN(http://www.nwtn.co.kr/) 28/AUG/2024

Interviewee : Lin Chi-Wei

1. I was impressed by Tape Music at the Biennale. Could you briefly introduce this

work?

Well ,it ‘s my great honor to be in Busan and responding to your questions, the “Tape

Music” is the first work of “Human Dynamic Coordination Models” series that we

developed since 2004 and yet it had been shown for more then 200 sessions in different

cities of the world, it is a “temporary socializing sound machine” consist of unpredicted

volunteers , who will facing an immediate challenge in the forming of a sound structure,

together with other members, without really given a fixed rule nor the notion of ideal

result, so each participants have to define their own role in the forming of the piece,

which is aesthetically undefined but gotta be defined through this game, such as an

experiment of direct democracy.

2. What do the letters on the strings symbolize? What message are you trying to

convey by having participants read them aloud?

There are no actual meanings in these phonemes , even many of them corresponds to the

use of vowels in certain oral traditions. As I had answered in previous question, my

intention is to form a temporary social community through the forming of a sound texture.

3. Why did you choose to focus on the increasingly disappearing ‘tape’ as the main

subject of your performance?

I used to be an experimental music musician and actually had used reel to reel analogical

tape as main gears, so it is seeming quite natural to me.

4. Talking Knots was also presented. I haven’t seen this work yet; could you briefly

introduce it as well?

This is an experiment for participants to aurally participate in the forming of a night

swamp ambience, based on the creation of repetitive patterns of non-vowels/

onomatopoeia sounds, such as the experience of being a frog or a cricket in the marshland

chorus at the summer nights.

5. What do you think about the concept of ‘collective intelligence’? How do you believe collective intelligence will impact humanity?

We are always part of the long history of collective intelligence such as homo-sapiens,

this is our fate, the problematic of the issue, is how to survive consciously while forging

our own communities, thus little by little regain our control over the the well doomed

6. Are you working on any new projects? If so, what is the theme?

I’m currently working on an EU funded projet , focusing on creating digital sound tool for

the forming of temporal community.

industrial culture.

6. What is the artistic direction you aim to pursue in your future works?

I will continue my experiments on human sound models , while rebuilding a theoretical

base on an ancien Chinese term: LI-YUE 禮樂 (Rites and Music) for future

“Model” works, also largely progressing the idea of Jacques Attali on LI-YUE in

his famous book on noise and economics, in which he reduced the idea of

“harmonisation”(He,和) to “surveillance and surpression”, I think through the

Models we can develop new Aesthetics in listening and interacting with “others”.

My research is also aiming at the models for the general reconciliation of

traditional culture and contemporary art practices, this approach is seeming quite

promising to me.