The most prestigious digital arts festival, Ars Electronica, is as to the world of Media Arts what the Oscars is to the film industry. Over the years, its importance has grown, making it the most important and remarkable festival of its kind, inspiring other festivals and awarding a series of prizes—the Prix Ars Electronica—that distinguish the creme de la creme of the international Media Arts scene. This year, one of its coveted Honorary Mentions went to a Chinese artist, a rare occurrence, but one that clearly indicates the rising international significance of Chinese Media Art. When this year's awards list was revealed, we were thrilled to see Yan Jun recognized in the category of Digital Music and Sound Art. The Beijing-based artist was called out for his new sound piece, Music For Listening On The Earth.This recording of Jun's installation Wormhole, which was commissioned by The Shop in 2008, consists in tiny sounds from a building, including crowd movement, the sound of water in the pipes system, air flow, and other discreet but recognizable noises that were recorded made through contact microphones that were attached to pipes. After modulation and noise reduction, these recordings were released as Wormhole Trip Souvenir .In 2010, Yan installed Wormhole No. 2 in his own washroom. With the same approach, he produced Music For Listening On The Moon for the "Moon Life" exhibition which was curated by Spanish artist Alicia Framis. Music For Listening On The Moon was an original and raw field recording. This particular sound piece was used again for Music For Listening On The Earth as a continuous project after The Moon.This sound piece consisted of 60 minutes of recordings gathered from the installation Wormhole No. 2, where tiny movements and the subtle buzzing and humming of electric currents were captured by contact microphones. Listeners may be surprised to learn that the audio has not been manipulated in post-production — the artist only adjusts the compression, modulated the audio. He encourages listeners to play this track in any environment, or mix it with any other sound.Talking about the concept behind the work, Yan says:I am not interested in science-fiction, but I am interested in reality, in which the listening event is created. I do not wish to comfort or entertain people with my works. I would like to confuse, hurt or isolate them… though sometimes it’s funny and entertaining anyway. The reason I choose the sounds from pipes in washrooms is that it’s always [easy and comfortable] to sit and listen to any tiny unknown sound at home. The earth and the moon [provide] two potential situations for listening and thinking [about] the tiny differences between reality and our subjective feelings to the reality.You can click here to listen to the track.Yan’s work gives rise to questions of what is a field recording and what is reality? What’s the difference between music and composition? The simple idea of listening to the digital recorder itself, its own amazing sound, makes us rethink the relationship of sound and life, and the very definition of music.
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