My inspiration starts with a video of a deaf American sound artist, Christine Sun Kim, talking about closed captions.

“I think a lot about closed captions. Those little lines of text below me right now. As a non-hearing person, I rely on them. Here’s a not-so-well-kept secret about closed captions: they suck. Captioning dialogue is one thing, but captioning sound is another. For example, if music starts to play, the captions might go something like: [music]. If. I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get: [violin music]. Which is… better, but still not enough. It doesn’t tell me anything about what that sound is made of. The more description, the better.”

                                                                                                  – “Artist Christine Sun Kim Rewrites Closed Captions”, Pop-Up Magazine (2020)

Her video stuck in my mind for a long time and made me think very deeply about it. Then it reminded me of an American artist, Mark Rothko’s color field paintings. When his paintings are seen from a distance, it is easy for people to perceive them as one color chunk like “red” or “yellow.” For example, his painting No.3/No.13 will be described as a painting consisting of magenta, black, green on orange. This perception is not wrong. However, people who cannot see the artwork will not be able to imagine how precise and detailed No.3/No.13’s colors are. Although it is black, if you look closely, it is not just one black color but painted in different shades of black by the various brush strokes, amount of acrylic on canvas, and the color surrounding it. This painting cannot be described using only three colors.

All the thoughts gathered in my mind and finally culminated into one idea: What if I write music that can be heard without hearing, seen without seeing? 

Premiered by Jonghwan Kim on December 4th 2022 at Auer Hall, Indiana University, IN

Performed by Jonghwan Kim on February 9th 2022 at Auer Hall, Indiana University, IN