Commensal, 2024, Mixed media (wood, speaker, amplifier, image, mono sound), 13.2 × 9 × 14 cm

Commensal is a sound archive presented in the form of a box, composed of recordings and images that document the geological and ecological environments of three regions: Gangwon Province in Korea, New Zealand, and Australia. The work includes sounds recorded with multichannel directional microphones and plants collected from the remote mountain ranges of Australia’s Blue Mountains, stones gathered by the artist during a 3,000 km journey across New Zealand’s South Island along with the recorded hardness of those stones, and the sounds of wind, water, and trees captured in the mountainous areas of Gangwon Province. Within the exhibition space, these sounds heard like layers of white noise carry not only the distinct sense of place of each site but also the artist’s embodied experiences and emotions interwoven with them.