* All proceeds from the sale of this album will be donated to Unicef (
www.unicef.org.uk). *
'○ 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
See more of Rae-Yen's work here:
rae-yen-song.com