The Sea, Mouth Open

Performance Documentation
Northwestern University New Music Conference 2023

Whisper Wind Water

Performance Documentation
Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik
Artist Residency, Berlin, Germany, 2023

Between Land And Land Is Sea

Sounds of bartering in accented German. A phone conversation in Vietnamese. Delivery trucks honking. Tram stopping. Kids Crying. Cashier machines beeping. Bluetooth Music. Silence.

ZOOM01_DXC_BER.MP3 is a site-specific sound project based on field recordings of urban ambience at the Dong Xuan Center in Lichtenberg, Berlin —the largest Vietnamese-run market in Germany that is based on Dong Xuan Center in Hanoi, Vietnam. Sound recordings pick up atmospheres of the various hangars that make up the markets, identify products and services offered in the shops, and trace snippets of conversations between storeowners, customers, and tourists. Through interlaced recordings that layer bring into one composition different aspects of the market life, this soundscape presents the market as a place of both economic and social exchange within the larger narratives of migratory routes and global economies.

This soundscape was created and performed live at an artist residency with Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Berlin, GE, July 2023), followed by a live performance at Manzi Art Space (Hanoi, VN, August 2023). From these soundscape performances, a radio broadcast was created, and awarded the Karl Sczuka Radio Art Research Grant in Cooperation with the Goethe Institute 2024.

ZOOM01_DXC_BER.MP3 (Dong Xuan Center)

traintracks

Late Show with David Letterman & Special Guest: Siri, 2020 (3'07")
This piece brings together three forms of scripted conversations —David Letterman's scripted interviews with female actresses, coded responses of interactive voice assistants like Siri, and sonic montage — in order to listen into the echos of sexism in forms as diverse as talk shows and artificial intelligence. Some of the responses are actual Siri responses, while others quote Amazon's, Apple's, and Microsoft’s official statements about the desired qualities of their digital assistants, generated by text-to-speech online software. 
(Logic Pro X)

Late Show with David Letterman & Special Guest: Siri

60% Acid Solution

Siren Virus, 2020
Siren Virus dwells in the material entrails of the sounds of the pandemic. A recording of ambulance sirens is stretched in time, transforming a passing siren into a sustained, textural reflection on the pandemic as a prolonged, ongoing emergency. In this temporal distortion, a space emerges for an extended experience of urgency. 
(Logic Pro X, Zoom Recorder)

siren virus

This piece was performed on the 4th July.
Was that the sound of gunshots or of fireworks? 
Experts say the key lies in the cadence.

(Performed as part of Marina Resende's Open Shed Project, Chicago, 2020)

star strangled banner

"I can't breathe" -- Covid-19.
"I can't breathe" -- George Floyd.

This composition gives sound to the movement of air through physical bodies --  lungs, air pumps, balloons blown up -- and of physical bodies through air -- balloons blow up, fireworks, US bombs. 

(Performed as part of my sound installation "air//air" for Marina Resende's Open Shed Project, Chicago, 4th July, 2020).

i can't breathe

// sound work // picking up the remainders of the collision of language / field recording / music 

instagram: the_maya_nguyen

maya nguyen

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