Collective Resonance

Collective Resonance in the Pandemic Era

"Collective Resonance" is a documentary film on the exchange program of the same title carried out by SNU (Korea), PGVIM (Thailand), and SCM (Australia) in the summer of 2020 as part of a project for fostering world-leading core departments in Seoul National University’s College of Music. As physical contact and travel became impossible due to a sudden breakout of a pandemic, drastic changes were brought to the field of musical education where the face-to-face practice is essential. In such a situation, the colleges of music each representative of Korea, Thailand, and Australia respectively, created an opportunity to survey the possibility and expandability of musical education and performance in the changing media environment with the theme of “Collective Resonance”.

This workshop constituted a laboratory in itself in terms of not only its contents but also its form. The students participating in the workshop and the minimum number of technical staff for online relaying were on-site in the studio, keeping physical distance and connecting to the Zoom screen through a camera at the center of the studio. The virtual space of Zoom, where the online conference was held, was captured in real-time by another computer and sent to YouTube. The participants of three different countries who were logged on to the online workshop probably experienced intermittent latency that occurred according to the conditions of their connection, facing each other through devices of various sizes and forms in their own time zones. However, can we say that we were not “together” then, at the moment as we introduced our works, attentively listened to each other’s performances, and freely shared our thoughts? We were physically separated and stayed at different times and speeds, but nonetheless, definitely “resonated together” at that moment.

Therefore this project explores the layers of various spaces and times between the network that constitutes the event of the ‘workshop’, through the gaze of a machine. Thus Donald Reid Womack’s “Intertwined”, performed as the opening piece of the event, is adopted as the main theme of this film, with footages shot on-site and images and sounds captured from the online streaming being woven into it. As the word “intertwined” suggests, the piece expresses how the musical traditions and instrumental characteristics of the West and the East are intertwined, contrasting at times and complementing at others, blurring the boundaries and being closely woven into each other. The aim of this project is to deliver the sense of being present, or liveness, and the message of the workshop in a sensuous form, through the disposition of images over the real and the virtual realms based on a unique and intensive aural image diffused from a cross-cultural entanglement of colors and rhythms. Presentness here refers not to a whole physical existence but more to the circulation of a network and the duration of inevitable interferences and delays in between. Ensemble, I believe, comes to being not through perfect unity but in the process of ceaselessly slipping away from that impossibility. Harmony becomes richer with minuscule differences from carefully tuning one’s instrument, sensitively responding to the rhythm and speed of others, and faithfully performing one’s role. From this perspective, Collective Resonance makes visible the process of participants being linked and synchronized through various interfaces. What can we do in this situation where nothing can be done? How are the aspects of live performance and communication variated through media technologies? The current problems would not be solved with filmic imagination alone. Thus film ever so often becomes helpless. Yet, the reality that this film seeks to capture is the moment of harmony being formed as particles and waves clash. I wish for your present to resonate together in colorful lights as you witness the moment.