gespräch mit erinleehong: reclaiming sound geographies

Interview: Pedro A. Ramírez

This interview was conducted in a garden on a rather chilly spring afternoon…

Pedro Ramírez 
I’ve prepared some questions and some possible stuff where we can start. For example, which city were you born in?

Erin Hong
I was born in South Korea, in a city called Gangneung. I only lived there until I was seven, so I don’t have huge memories. I just remember my hometown as a beach, because it’s literally on the coast. With forests, too. It wasn’t countryside, but a city with nature. Half of my family, my dad’s side, is Korean-American.

PR
And then you studied arts in the university in Seoul, right?

EH 
Yeah, the university was called Seoul Institute of the Arts, though the campus was not in Seoul. I studied there for a year and then decided to move to Germany because I couldn’t stay longer. During high school, I wanted to go abroad and study art or literature. I shifted plans because of COVID, yet after the situation improved, I returned to my plans for universities in other countries.

PR
So you only did one year of art studies there, right?

EH
Yes, I had only one year of art education there, though I cannot exclude my family when talking about this. My dad teaches English literature and my mom is an artist in Korea, so they influenced me a lot.

PR
Did you learn an instrument when you were a kid? How was your approach to music?

EH
My first approach was playing with those old phones and calculators where the numbers make sounds. I used to play melodies on them, and for my seventh Christmas present, I wanted a calculator because of that. I wasn’t into math, yet I remember saying, “I want a calculator for my Christmas present.“

My mom was surprised because I could hear sounds and guess what sound or pitch it was. When she called somebody, I would hear the number sounds and ask, “Oh, you called this person,“ from the rhythm and melody. Those small experiences made them suspect I might be interested in sound or have some hearing ability.

The first instrument I learned was piano around age five. The piano was digital with lights on the keyboard. When you play something, lights show up and you press them to move to the next step.

PR
What was the point when you decided to go electronic, let’s say? I mean, to connect the calculator to the piano, I guess.

EH
Looking back, I’ve been interested in electronic stuff for a long time. At the time, I didn’t know I wanted to shift that way. It happened naturally without a specific moment when I decided “I’m going to do this.“ Growing up, I became more interested in video art, which led me to electronic sound since video arts contain all kinds of experimental sounds.

I say it was natural because I never consciously thought, “This is good, I’ll do this.“ I was simply drawn to these sounds. I never explicitly acknowledged liking these sounds – like microwave or refrigerator noises at 3 a.m. – yet I felt comfortable with those buzzing or interesting sounds from electronic devices.

PR
That goes to the question, what are your major influences for your record especially or for this period of your time?

EH
Location is a big thing. For this album, I don’t have a single artist reference, though the records and overall sound of the label, 110100100.global, was a big influence. They have experimental albums using a lot of field recordings.

PR
Field recordings have many paths. There’s phonography or people recording sound as photography – taking a sonic picture of landscape. Then there’s others who want to augment it and make proper compositions with the recordings as source material. Where do you position yourself, or what made you decide that recording a sound could be music or your music?

EH
Listening to other field recordings was the first step. Initially, when you Google field recording, you find “untouched“ three hours in the mountains, or riverside, or iceberg recordings…

PR
Exactly! that would be more like phonography – photography…

EH
Yeah, yet I realized that if I were actually in the mountains for three hours, I wouldn’t hear everything the microphone recorded. I would have heard something else. That’s why I wanted to make field recordings similar to my unconscious experience. What I’m hearing wouldn’t be the same as what’s objectively recorded.

PR
Did you ever find an artist where you said, “Wow, I like these recordings. Finally, this is possible. I would like to make music like this“?

EH
Yes, I did. Like Natasha Barrett.

PR
Interesting. How did you get to know her music?

EH
My dad sent me a link. He doesn’t make music himself, but he’s listening to music all the time. When I got interested in field recordings, I started sending him links and discussing music gear. He did some research too, and we communicated about it.

PR
I’m trying to weave some conceptual framework here, but you can tell me if I’m straying too far [laughs]. I’ve noticed that the concept of place recurs a lot in your work. The place and the lines that connect them through travel/commute… unweaving spools, line drawings, cartography. On one hand, the liner notes of your EP have a “psycho geographical city recording project in Cologne, Berlin, Incheon, and Seoul.“ This can be understood in your usage of recordings of different train stations and localities… There’s also this song “Chronestesia“, which is the capacity to experience and reflect upon a personal timeline of events, is the title of one song… Am I going too far fetched? (laughs)

EH
Yeah, I mean, you got me (laughs) That’s kind of right. And yeah…

PR
Before going too far myself, can you expand on how you understand space and place?

EH
Regarding lines, that’s how I see things or hear things. I don’t see the whole picture, rather I start from one point, follow it and meet something else. I’m always drawing one continuous line. Imagine riding a train: you’re staying still while constantly moving. Things outside the window pass by, making the window screen feel like it’s changing. That’s the core concept, maybe, because…

PR
Oh that reminds me of the Japanese manga artist Yuichi Yokoyama. He creates these incredible comic books about watching landscapes from fast-moving trains in Japan. They’re completely silent with no words, just movement and lines. You see people, landscapes, and this sensation of speed.

EH
Oh, sounds nice, I think I know this work…

PR
His approach isn’t traditional manga, often framed as neo-manga. It’s very interesting – I really like his work.

EH
Yeah, I think the similarity for the landscapes is that you always have the horizon. The skies, waters and lands change, yet the horizon remains constant. It’s overlapping somehow. The idea of something staying the same while gradually shifting – like a circle turning into a square little by little, where you can’t tell exactly when it changed from circle to square. This concept fascinates me.

PR
Let’s talk about the titles, for example, „Chronesthesia“. Where does that come from?

EH
I was questioning the chronological way we perceive time. When you remember a moment, you never recall it chronologically. At least I couldn’t. I remember fragments – this part, that part – forming more of a circle than a line.

PR 
I find that term interesting – chronesthesia. If anesthesia means no feeling, chronesthesia suggests the feeling of time, right? Many of your recordings capture that sensation of traveling, like the sounds you hear on trains. Not empty spaces, but transitional ones. What can you tell me about that track?

EH
That track comes from one long field recording in Berlin, from point A to point B. I intentionally went to Alexanderplatz, which is crowded, to record people’s sounds. Then I took the S-Bahn to meet my mom who was visiting.

The journey was a task – you plan to go somewhere, need to be on time, take specific trains. It was about an hour long. Interestingly, I remember the time passing, yet not how it progressed. I recall standing in a station, calling my mom in the subway, a kid shouting the station name, repeating the “exit“ message when the train doors opened. That’s how memory works for me. I played with time in the track, making it non-chronological, like scenes passing by. That’s why I named it that.

PR
Milmul has a specific meaning, right?

EH
Yes, Milmul means high tides in Korean. I lived on Yeongjong Island, where Korea’s international airport is located. Whenever I go to Seoul, I take the airport train across a bridge. It’s a core memory of island life – always crossing water to reach the mainland.

The journey isn’t long, about 40 minutes total, with eight minutes crossing the bridge. You always pass over the sea and can see the tides on Korea’s west coast. During low tide, you see muddy ground before water comes in from the horizon.

PR
How do the high tides and low tides look? [Laughs] I literally have no idea since I was born and raised in the high South American mountains…

EH
It’s like muddy ground with no water. You see water coming from the horizon, suddenly becoming sea very quickly. You can walk on it when it’s low, though you can’t go too far because when the tide comes in, you might get caught.

It feels amazing seeing the tide coming toward you while simultaneously traveling to the city by train. It’s crazy because in the trains you hear sounds from the bridge, announcements in four languages – English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese – because it’s the airport train. That’s sort of the routine whenever I go to Seoul.

PR
Alright, moving things a little. Tell me about your album cover. It’s a drawing of yours, am I right? It holds some resemblances to the traces of your work “home“, in the sense that it’s like a map or an aerial view of a place. In that project you used the lines, square shapes and the buffer objects of the programming environment to make a portrait of your home.
What is happening in this cover?  

EH
Yeah, it’s a sound view of the cities. I created a digital drawing mixing all four cities I have lived in or dream of into one map. The circle part represents Cologne, because that’s Cologne’s shape. The artificial land is Yeongjong Island in Incheon. There are fragments of Berlin too. The background is a wall from my old home – the same apartment as in my Pure Data project. That’s the only house I truly consider home. I layered the city map onto this picture of the wall in my home.

PR
You show a strong interest in cartography and places. Where does that come from?

EH
It stems from growing up in Korea with a Korean-American dad, and now living in Germany. I’m constantly thinking about where I belong or should be. Initially, this caused stress – thinking about your future when you don’t know tomorrow’s plans. Moving to Germany for KHM was significant.

Now I find it interesting because I’ve gradually realized I don’t need to belong anywhere specific. That’s more comfortable. I crave whichever place I’m not in. When in Korea, I miss Germany, and vice versa.

PR
Let’s talk about the music. You mentioned no particular reference besides Barrett? Do you have any references for the electronic tones and beats you’re using in your songs?

EH
Yeah right, It’s not entirely field recording. For the drum parts, I was influenced by people from the label 110100100.global.

PR
How did you connect with them?

EH
I found them randomly online. They’re based in Leipzig. They had an announcement looking for demos, then messaged me saying, “You should send us something.“ I was surprised since I already liked their label and planned to approach them about releasing something. It happened quickly, which amazed me. Everything just worked out.

PR
Do you see this record as a beginning of something new, or rather as the end of long process? Have you considered different versions, like live performances or touring?

EH
This feels like a beginning, definitely – it’s my first official EP. I’m considering live performances, too. The fourth track mostly comes from my live set at Hofkonzerte at last year’s KHM Rundgang, just shortened slightly. Live performance interests me because you’re with people, in a specific space and time. Playing with that environment is fascinating. I enjoy the randomness… So yea, overall, this feels like a beginning.

Yet simultaneously, it concludes something. The album’s named “Reclamation“ because I conceived it across four cities. I’m fetching sounds from different cities to create my own land, mirroring the album cover – making an imaginary place where everything coexists. This connects to reclamation because Yeongjong Island itself was created through land reclamation. Originally four small islands, they filled the sea with land to connect them.

PR
Reclamation – reclaiming sounds and memories.

EH
Yes. For me, it’s filling my memories into one continent.

PR
Do you have plans for something else? Would you do anything differently next time?

EH
I’m developing new ideas. This project focused on locations and field recordings of spaces, while now I’m interested in local languages and verbal or nonverbal elements. It’s still connected to locations, just from a different angle. I’m considering something with speech or sound poetry – not traditional sound poetry, more like working with spoken words.

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