THE Naval Store will be transformed into a swirling arty ecosystem in Jsuk Han’s latest exhibition Organs, Breathes, Salt.
Based on real-time Freo weather data including wind speed, wind direction, humidity, temperature and atmospheric pressure, a post-modern sound front will rip through the massive exhibition space.
Blended into the immersive soundscape will be field recordings, flocking algorithms (a kind of digital murmuration) and the resonant frequencies of the Naval Store building.
• Sound artist Jsuk Han. photo courtesy HAERAN
“Because these three systems interact continuously, the sound is never the same twice,” Han says.
“The installation will sound very different on a still morning than during a Fremantle Doctor in the afternoon.”
Han says the inspiration for Organs, Breathes, Salt was the Naval Store itself, which is on an exposed windy point near the Freo Traffic Bridge.
• Jsuk Han setting up Organs, Breathes, Salt. Photos by Nina Juniper
“When I first visited the space, I was struck by how the building seemed to already be breathing — the harbour wind moving through it, the resonance of the old industrial structure alive within the walls,” he says.
“I wanted to make that audible rather than impose something onto it. The title came from thinking about what the space fundamentally is: an organ and a body that breathes air, accumulates material over time, and holds the traces of everything that has passed through it.”
Adding to the immersive experience will be the state-of-the-art 10-channel sound system.
Suspended from the ceiling trusses will be outré speakers, created from weathered objects Han found lying about Fremantle, including buoys.
“Each has a speaker module attached to its surface, which is also used as a microphone — speaker and microphone operate on the same principle and can be reversed,” he says.
“Sound is projected through the object’s own natural resonant frequencies. The object becomes a membrane,” says sound installation artist Jsuk Han.
The exhibition will kick off with a live performance by an avant-garde trio—Sage Pbbbt (ritual vocalist), Raras Sukardi (clarinet) and Han (manipulating the soundscape).
Feedback
“The idea is not for them to perform over the installation but alongside it — their voices and tones enter the feedback system through microphones, absorbed into the resonant frequencies of the building, until they become indistinguishable from the installation itself,” Han says.
The audio wizard says he is inspired by the “history of feedback” and artists like Alvin Lucier and John Cage, and philosophically by Gilles Deleuze’s thinking on difference and repetition, and Zhuangzi’s feedback loop.
Fremantle
“In terms of place, I am consistently inspired by the relationship between built environments and natural forces—the way a building accumulates the history of what has passed through it, the way salt forms through filtration and time,” Han says.
“Fremantle itself has been a significant influence on this work — the Fremantle Doctor, the harbour, the geology of the Coral Coast.”
Organs, Breathes, Salt is at The Naval Store, 141 Queen Victoria St, Fremantle from April 24-26 with a live music performance at 7pm on April 24.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK