Hyo Jee Kang
Mind Improvisation IV:Shadow

Mind Improvisation IV: Shadow develops Hyo Jee Kang’s long-term practice of Conceptual Transformation. Transformation is not treated as a one-way passage from original to copy. What has been transformed can alter what seemed to precede it; mediation changes what passes through it, and the changed thing can return to transform its source.

Shadow begins from this nonlinear condition. Neural activity, physiological signals, movement, voice, acoustic sound, live electronics, AI interaction, physical material and audience participation enter a changing field in which no single element holds final authority. The work remains within tensions between measurement and experience, correlation and meaning, intention and involuntary response, human and nonhuman, past and present.

Misunderstanding is central. In Hyo Jee Kang’s process, moments in which technological systems respond without fully understanding are not treated as simple errors to erase. They become material. Delay, distortion, failed translation and incomplete perception reveal the gap between what is sensed, what is processed, and what is lived.

The performance combines piano, Korean Sori Buk, voice, breath-based instruments, live electronics, neural and physiological sensing, machine learning, physical materials, projected visual forms and audience intervention. Participating audience members may also contribute neural and physiological signals, altering the conditions to which performer and system respond.

Deep-learning processes search for patterns inside changing data; sound is filtered and transformed in real time; the performer answers through gesture, speech, acoustic action and improvisation. These responses alter the next conditions from which data and action emerge. The work is therefore not a fixed mapping of signal to output, but an evolving loop of transformation.

Because Shadow is still in development, the images below are assembled as a project constellation: performance documentation, sensing experiments, stage references, projection studies and material actions that shape the imagined premiere environment.

These moving-image materials are development references rather than finished documentation of Shadow. The short process clips are muted by default so that ambient rehearsal noise does not dominate the viewing experience; Growing Seeds is included as a fuller audiovisual reference for the evolving relationship between performance, projection and brain data.

In the making process, ChatGPT responded as though it could hear musical sounds it could not actually hear. That misunderstanding did not merely expose a technical limitation; it altered the artist’s perception of the exchange, and that altered the work itself. Previous conversations, questions, corrections and failures can therefore re-enter the live performance as ready-made material.

Shadow is a multidimensional mirror. The body is reflected through biosignals, sound through live electronics, the past through fragments and recorded traces, and experience through perception and understanding. Yet the mirror does not preserve intact what it encounters. Every passage transforms.

Delay is equally fundamental. What happens, what is sensed, what is processed, what is heard, what is perceived and what is understood do not occupy the same moment. The piece inhabits that temporal slippage.

Shadow is conceived as a live, interdisciplinary and site-responsive performance for black-box theatres, galleries, media-art spaces and festival contexts. It combines voice, acoustic sound, movement, live electronics, neural and physiological sensing, AI interaction, deep-learning pattern recognition and physical materials such as ink, paper, wire and lantern-like forms.

The work is intended for audiences interested in contemporary art, sound, performance, media culture, embodiment and critical questions around AI and sensing technology. No specialist knowledge is required. With prior consent, selected audience members may contribute live biosignals and interaction, entering the work as co-creators rather than only spectators.