Pinocchio’s Transformation (2019) at Maryland Institute College of Art

Chair, strings, acrylic, amplifier, speaker, guitar tuner, screw

36.5 x 38 x 90cm (length x width x height)

Instructions for both the audience and myself in this performance include:

1) Shaking the strings

2) Flipping the strings

3) Scrubbing the strings

This piece is a sound sculpture created out of everyday objects as an experience artwork. I was influenced by Tony Conrad’s sound instruments seen at ICA Philadelphia in 2018. I translate sound to a sound instrument which I then translate to another new sound. The amplifier with microphones and a speaker near the chair which amplifies the sound of the three guitar strings attached. After I received a cochlear implant, I went from a silent world to a world which included sound. The sound world strongly influenced my perception. When many objects moved I heard sound and I felt that it had life. In addition, the phenomena of synesthesia temporarily created sound colors. Following that phenomena, I asked myself the question: Am I the same human between my current and former self? My brain has been sonically reorganized through my cochlear implant. I think the reorganized brain affects my sense of space. In fact, my family and doctor pointed out to me that I could walk straight after my surgery because sound gave me a new audio-spatial ability. So, like the story of Pinocchio’s transformation from wood to human, my body and brain were reproduced yet they are unified by my memory. This experience of translation gives an audience different ideas through constructing a new world.