Yeondoo Jung

Inevitable Blues presents the vitality and rhythm of life that cannot be seen but can be heard and felt through the body, conveyed directly through music, particularly the blues. Yeondoo Jung finds in this genre—born in the mid-19th century among African Americans in the southern United States—a self-reflective yet humorous mode of imagination that enables one to navigate unspeakable circumstances and inescapable hardship. The work consists of performances by five musicians, each carrying their own story and engaging in a loose, polyphonic ensemble. The open structure allows the audience to experience each sound both individually and collectively, visualizing the essence of improvisation and resonance that lies at the heart of the blues. In Inevitable Blues – Contrabass, composer Ray Soul performs the contrabass, having advised on the twelve-bar structure, instrumentation, BPM, and chord progression that shape the work’s musical foundation. The performance is marked by a deep immersion that draws emotion to its fullest. The work extends this emotional range through digital technology, translating the subtle vibrations of the performer’s fingertips into sequences of sound data and light. Jung explores the intersection where the physicality of the analog instrument meets the mechanical language of digital systems. The contrabass’s deep resonance transforms into pulsations of light and vibration, allowing the audience to experience the body of music itself and affirming that even in the digital age, the tremor of the hand and the rhythm of improvisation remain at the core of artistic expression.

Aching Fingers, 2025, Pottery light installation, mixed media, 39 × 38 × 38 cm (5), Dimensions variable, Ed. 1/5, A.P. 2 Yeondoo Jung, who has long been interested in the juxtaposition of visual imagery with auditory elements such as music, voice, tone, and noise, constructs a responsive structure among video, photography, and sculpture in Inevitable Blues. Aching Fingers serves as a visual response to Inevitable Blues – Contrabass, in which five jars emit shifting, iridescent light in correspondence with musician Ray Soul’s finger movements on the contrabass. The work visualizes the tactile sensation of fingers pressing against strings, revealing the inner vibration of sound, while the form of the jars, reminiscent of vessels used for fermenting rice wine, connects the rhythm of the blues to the organic process of fermentation. For Jung, the meeting of rice and yeast represents a principle of creation close to the divine, embedding within the work a belief in transformation and regeneration rather than decay and disappearance. Inevitable Blues and Aching Fingers extend this worldview into an exploration of expanded perception, where vision and sound, analog sensation and digital technology converge. By precisely aligning sound data with programmed light responses, Jung translates musical rhythm and bodily sensation into a digital control system. This process transcends a formal experiment in technology to become a meditation on how sensory experience and bodily perception can be reconstructed and reinterpreted through digital mediation. For Jung, the digital operates not as a tool but as a living interface through which music, material, emotion, and device continuously transform one another.