Attention Exercise: The Sound
2023-2024
Single-channel video installation, 3840x1080(32:9) video, color, sound, 9m 24s
Dimension variables
Attention Exercise: The Sound visualizes and conceptualizes the eye movement data of invisible working body in the current digital and platform economy, converting it into sound and disseminating the pressures of the body faces, to generate a collective experience. On a single screen, gaze points and paths representing the eye movements of three platform delivery riders recorded in Attention Exercise: Our Collective Eyes I (2022) are paired with words describing the world of work and labor based on three categories: “work accident,” “work emotion,” and “work value,” forming a rhythmic constellation that connects like a relay race. A synchronized trumpet sound resembling the breathing and pressure of a motorcycle’s exhaust changes in pitch, length, texture, and resolution according to the workers’ gaze data. Through its rhythm, speed, and oscillation, a cacophony of sound activates our senses, embodying the invisible laboring bodies and related networks. These audio-visual landscapes, with the continuous interplay of work accidents, work emotions, and work values, map the world of work and labor that permeates our lives and question the possibilities of other compositions.
Production credit
Gaze data: from Ahram Jeong’s Attention Exercise: Our Collective Eyes I (2022)
[Participants: Yiseul An (female rider in 30s, worked for 4 years), Rider A (male rider in 40s, worked for 3 years, Rider Union), Rider B (male rider in 40s, worked for 3 years, Rider Union)]
Programming and sound production: Sungmin Park
Support for data visualization and sonification: Art Council Korea Art and Technology Convergence
Production support: Asia Culture Center