Korean language

Dada Inryu

Dada Inryu is a planning and creative group consisting of Hyewon Kim, who is engaged in music activities, and Da-eun Lee, who focuses on theater-based work. The name of the team is derived from the first letters of Dadaism, seeking the "meaning of meaninglessness" in life. They blend traditional and electronic musical instruments to create their unique sounds and aim to discover new meanings through audio-visual performances.

NEWTOPIA; The Fantasy of the New

It views the attitude towards the new through the eyes of a shaman (artist) who worships the divine.

This leads to the conclusion that we desire to get closer to the divine, and we reflect on what "newness" truly means.

Dada Inryu, NEWTOPIA; The Fantasy of the New, audio visual performance, 20min, 2018

Initial Work Plan

Dada Inryu aimed to move beyond the limits of their individual artistic practices (music composition and video works) to collaborate on creating audio-visual performances. Our main theme was "newness," focusing on questioning things that we've named and accepted without hesitation. To embody this theme, we chose to work with techniques such as sampling, collage, and overlap. Our objective was to provide a sensory experience for the audience to reflect on the meaning of "newness" through video and performances that transcended past and present. We anticipated that our own interpretation of "newness" would ultimately not be entirely "new" in itself.The final presentation took the form of a live performance, leading us to use Ableton Live for music, Arena Resolume5 for VJing, and experimenting with controlling various electronic instruments on-site.

Work Process

Before diving into the actual creative process, we, Dada Inryu, faced our initial challenge: how to approach the chosen theme, "The Fantasy of Newness." We initially started by conducting research into modern/contemporary historical contexts to identify the criteria for "newness." While researching, we came across a quote by Dae-gwon Hwang, an environmental activist, which resonated with us: "Reality is just a tiny island floating on top of unreality. Unreality is a world beyond imagination, and the public easily falls into the trickery of those who can see it." Although we intended to explore various fields like science, history, and society/politics, we narrowed our focus to the cultural and artistic domain following the saying, "an artist and a shaman are just a single sheet of paper apart."Secondly, to familiarize ourselves with our respective tools, we held spontaneous jam sessions. Given the live nature of live performance, we needed to determine each member's role and the instruments and stage setup for our performance. This phase led to a significant shift in our project's direction.By borrowing the double meaning of the '신(shin, the divine/the new) in the title, we chose to represent the artist who serves the new, as a shaman who serves the gods. Thus, we decided to incorporate traditional musical instruments, sample sounds, and use five-color cloths for our performance to visually evoke shamans.After extensive discussions, we divided our performance into three stages, each with its sub-theme. We carried out music composition and video work to match each sub-theme. Logic Pro X was our primary tool for music composition, and for the final stages, we used Ableton Live. For video production, we selected various source materials and processed them using Photoshop and Arena Resolume 5. During the live performance, we utilized Arena Resolume 5 for live VJing.

NEWTOPIA; The Fantasy of the New, stage sketch

NEWTOPIA; The Fantasy of the New, jamming together in the workshop

NEWTOPIA; The Fantasy of the New, video work using Arena Resolume5

NEWTOPIA; The Fantasy of the New - Performance Subthemes and Content

Phase 1: Opening 1-1) Ringing the Bell:   - Announcing the latest news (News Overlaps / Collages).   - Scraping headlines with the words 'new' and 'novelty.'   - Ringing the bell whenever words like 'new,' 'novel,' or 'original' appear.
1-2) Chronological Progression:   - Browsing the internet for interrelated information (Web Surfing).   - Creating chaos through music.
Phase 2: The Endless Circle (Subtitle: Feast of Words)  2-1) Endless Circle    - Emphasizing recurring trends and art movements as typography (Feast of Words).   - Depicting a dystopian future with heightened symbolism (e.g., John Cage's "4 minutes 33 seconds").
2-2) Ringing the Bell:  - Visualizing art movements: Neo, Postmodern, Modernism, Contemporary, Conceptual Art, etc. (e.g., melting contemporary artwork or glitches/typography).
2-3) Intermittently inserting videos depicting the weariness of modern individuals
Phase 3: Stuffed Future  - The disparity between the past's drawn future and the actuality / A performance symbolizing the resurrection of things of the past functionally rendered obsolete.  - Commercial songs -> crafting a retro-style advertisement with a simple musical composition.  - Exploring uncomplicated structures within modern music (K-POP, Vaporwave, etc.).

Epilogue

One of the aspects we wanted to be cautious about in this project was the explanatory music and visuals. While we included familiar elements in the lyrics and video texts, we deliberately avoided giving the audience any opportunity for speculation or interpretation. However, it seems that we didn't predict well the confusion that the exclusion of explanations would cause among the viewers. We had hoped that the audience would witness the breakdown of the world of novelty in which Dada Inryu believed, passing through three stages. But it occurred to us that we didn't manage to convince our audience of our goal in the first phase.What is novelty? As a student studying arts and an aspiring artist, I have always been asked for "something new and creative." I continually question myself, wondering, "Isn't what I'm doing right now too conventional? Could it be that I'm unconsciously imitating something I've seen somewhere else?" In the midst of these doubts, I recently began to question whether we genuinely desire something new and unseen from us. Our work can be seen as a question about "What is the novelty that we believe in, and where are we headed?" We named ourselves Dada Inryu to reflect on following the meaning of meaninglessness. In our future works, I hope we can focus more on creating what individuals sense rather than assigning meaning. Perhaps, meaning comes after the work, and it might even come into existence after we've departed from this world.

Report abuse