Seoul, July 31, 2015, Seoul, http://www.dotolim.com
My second visit to a Dotolim event – last time was about two years ago in their space close to Hapjeong. Now they moved a few subway stops further, near Sangsu station, and the space has changed from an officetel space to a big apartment. Maybe even bigger than the previous office.
There were three separate performances, followed by a jam session of all three musicians. First was Baja Woo, and I quite liked the warm bass heavy bubbling and humming which was coming out of his laptop. It was soothing in a way and slightly hypnotic. A kind of abstract dub music. It was the opener, making everyone to transition into another mind-state, and it worked quite well.
Next was Jin Sangtae, with a much more nerve wrecking performance. I remember his performance two years ago, when he was playing with a repurposed trumpet and some kitchen tools. It was very modest and gentle. However this time, his performance made me most of all think of a visit to the dentist, when he is drilling a tooth and the high-frequency sounds reverberate through the whole skull. Not pleasant. In the performance, the sounds were coming from a number of disassembled hard drives mounted with contact microphones or just microphones dangling on a string, banging against the spinning metal plates.
Stefan Tiefengraber’s performance was a little bit mellower, but just a little bit. The special thing was that sounds were used to generate simultaneous visuals (through a beamer). Another specialty was that instead of turning knobs, Tiefengraber opened up the output-input looped devices and used his wet fingers to directly modulate the sounds. The complexity of the setup – direct touches and visuals – did not really match with the complexity of the sounds, which were more or less typical range of squeaks and crackling sounds well known from no-input mixer performances.
In the final jam, I just found myself praying that Jin stops his ear torture soon. Woo was predestined to stay in the background, and Tiefengraber was attempting the difficult task of politely trying to keep up with Jin’s amplified rattling contact mics and record player stylus grinding metal plates at high speed.