Plastic Fugue is an interactive sound installation project that begins with a childhood memory of the concert flute, which I couldn't learn due to financial hardship, and which came to symbolize classism to me. Being financially debilitated is not only a discomfort, but also makes children feel unqualified to even try, thereby normalizing this classism even in art.
It happened to me again when I studied painting. The materials are marketed with an aura, including canvas, wood, fabric, paper, paint, oil, and even a pencil. Our art already conspires too much with the neoliberal economy, ironically, against its supposed goal: liberty. Classifying the quality of art based on the price of materials is repetitive, much like how blue and green, once symbols of wealth, were valued and reserved for royalty in history.
This structure led me to view classical music as the only true form of music, and canvas painting, which originated in Italy in the late 15th century, as the sole standard in visual art. Decades later, I realized there was more art behind the things I once believed to be art alone. Then I attempted to gather all these ironical elements into diverse mediums I had experienced so far.
Plastic Fugue as Diplom project features four parts.
0. Introducing air&dust, a (introduction) video that appropriates a product unveiling conference. CEO Framey from Moberm, a pseudo corporation, speaks about how Moberm decided to expand its business into musical instruments based on the CEO's childhood memory. It boldly claims air&dust’s multifunctionality in musical instruments but remains ultimately hollow.
Framey, the speaking character, serves as a device that indirectly voices the artist's narrative within the work, while also reenacting the structure of art polluted by stereotypes and neoliberalism. Character is made with the virtual youtuber avatar technique.
1. Plastic Fugue,
an interactive sound installation
which consists of six flutes (air 5-10, air Pp 1) with air pumps, each producing a single tone and activated remotely through coded conducting buttons. The order of play is random every time as the buttons signal remotely.
The fugue has long stood as a symbol of musical authority and elitism, a form that represents technical mastery and the traditional hierarchy of composition. In my work, I try to break apart that formal authority, stripping the fugue down to its bare structure and shifting it toward an exploration of sequence and time. Instead of upholding its idealized order, I imagine a more open, accessible way of assembling sound, a kind of democratic counterpoint. You could call it a process of unmaking the fugue, of abstracting it.
2. Sax Recital, a recital video piece played by Arno Arial featuring DIY-Saxophone series, which is a quite decent structure of mouthpiece built using open-source 3D models and handcrafted with PCL and PLA. Filmed while Arial was wearing earphones for listening to classical music and soundproof gear on top to block out both external and self-produced instrumental sound. This piece is loop-playing all the time in the exhibition, making broken fugal counterpoint together with Plastic Fugue.
3. Pp 1-9, air 1-4, and dust 1-2, early-made instruments and polymer paintings which I found no compelling reason to continue using traditional materials, and so I ended up creating them with PCL and PLA.
The above instruments and paintings are the result of instrument-making through DIY-ness and open-source files from the internet by melting, merging, and mixing the illusion of classism's shape into biodegradable polymers, not only with a hand, but also with a 3D printer. However, any sacred qualification to make is not needed. DIY instructions for these DIY instruments are distributed at the exhibition and website.
When audiences press the buttons, this neutral orchestra plays a Fugue-like style, which overlaps sounds every few seconds. Placing control of the orchestra in the hands of the audience, the work democratizes a position of authority and questions inherited hierarchies through both material and method.