‘○ squigoda song cycle ● water~land~air ○’ (2024) is a new sonic collaboration between Rae-Yen Song, Tommy Perman, a tea fungus and its environment. Together they have created three evolving soundscapes as part of the current research exhibition and live programme ‘life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot’ collated by Rae-Yen Song at Centre for Contemporary Arts, in Glasgow, Scotland (until 18 May 2024).
The soundscapes have been created using audio recordings of the fermenting tea fungus (commonly known as kombucha), which forms part of a new sculptural installation made by Song for the exhibition. Alongside the sounds of the feeding and fermentation processes, other noises were made and played by Song with makeshift instruments: a range of percussive hits and flute tones resonating from glazed ceramic sculptures; and sonorous beats from a drum made with dried and stretched bacterial cellulose (grown by the fermenting tea fungus) as the drum skin. These sounds have been engineered and abstracted by Perman to form the basis of the soundscapes.
The sculptural installation incorporates a pool of tea fungus which is connected to contact mics, a hydrophone and other sensors. Sonic inputs – such as those caused by the movements of viewers – pass through it; and as it slowly ferments, the tea fungus itself generates changing signals and audio inputs – enabling it to modulate Perman and Song’s underlying work, and conduct its own ever-changing multi-voice ensemble. For the duration of the exhibition, the tea fungus quietly deejays the live soundscapes that flow through the show’s three realms: water, land, and air.
‘○ squigoda song cycle ● water~land~air ○’; sees a collaboration not only between humans Rae-Yen Song and Tommy Perman, but with the tea fungus itself. The work actively embraces continuous change, and establishes a creative relationship and experiment in multi-species collaboration.
Further information about the exhinbition and live programme can be found here:
www.cca-glasgow.com/programme/life-bestowing-cadaverous-soooooooooooooooooooot
Reviews
“It may appear, at least in terms of its credits, that this is a duo recording between conceptual artist Rae-Yen Song and composer / sound designer Tommy Perman. There are, in fact, two other ‘players’ that contributed to this series of three soundscapes, created to accompany an exhibition (‘life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot’) at Glasgow’s Centre For Contemporary Arts. The first is the sound of fermenting tea fungus – kombucha, to give it its more acceptable and hipster-marketable name – and the second is the environment itself, required to encourage the transformation process.
Mat Smith, Further Blog
“The sounds of fermentation, recorded with contact mics, are readily audible as the trickling, bubbling, oozing noises that underpin ‘water’. Elsewhere, the ever-inventive Perman uses his sound design chops to deploy slowed-down, macroscopic clouds of ambient texture that approximate the sound of bubbles bursting on the surface of the liquid. Elsewhere, Song employs rudimentary instruments, including a drum made from a bacterial cellulose layer of skin recovered from the top of the tea fungus. That resonant tapping is what underpins the second piece here, ‘land’, creating a contemplative, barren wilderness of rhythmic pulses that remind me of sections from Midori Takada’s Through The Looking Glass. At times beatific, at others grotesque, these three pieces display an incredible unexpectedness that exists in an unparalleled, undocumented domain of close-up sonic investigation.”