Sound does not come from outside; it is already resonating within us. To hear the Earth’s diverse reverberations―unseen yet ever-present―and to become entangled with them is to begin to understand the world. Sonic Planet ― Hertz and Dough initiates the first vibration of that beginning.
Since 2017, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art has experimented with flexible forms of encounter through its “BEYOND Exhibition” project, situating artworks throughout the museum outside conventional galleries. This exhibition extends from that practice, inviting visitors to sense the sounds of themselves and the beings around them and to discover resonances of coexistence.
To develop multiple approaches to connecting with one another through sound, the exhibition suggests the following attitudes: first, instead of seeking to see more, close your eyes and listen―to take in the vibrations of the here and now. Second, treat listening as an active gesture rather than mere reception. Third, break away from human-centered auditory experience and closely attune to the Earth’s manifold voices. In doing so, the soundscape around us can be reimagined as a complex “sonic terrain,” a field of perception shaped by sound.
Hertz and Dough is also the first to inaugurate Buk SeMA’s Artist Research program, which sheds light on how inquiry and reflection unfold and expand within creative processes. Through sound, the artist collective seeks to understand the world, while at the same time shaping its own narrative through a sustained study of listening itself. Within a sonic realm where technology and ecology, human and nonhuman, space and environment intersect, Hertz and Dough poses questions about what and how we hear, and how we make sense of it. The two new works on view―Audinua 12 and Auditory Strata―are the outcome of this research and an experimental proposition on complex structures of listening.
In Audinua 12, visitors encounter an 7.4.1 channel site-specific sound system that makes audible the Earth’s numerous voices. Here, guided along the pathways shaped by the group, visitors come to sense not only the act of listening but also the embodied perception of shifting times, rhythms, and networks of relation. Within the organic movements of non-linear sound flowing along curvilinear trajectories, the rhythms of nature, community, and city are experienced as if within a vast auditory ecology. In contrast, Auditory Strata invites a more active pursuit and observation of sound. Each sound, collected, processed, and reconfigured during the research, travels through the pathways of speaker modules and enclosures, layering into multiple strata of auditory experience. This is not simply the hearing of sound but the hearing of time―a convergence where past and present sensibilities meet.
This exhibition aspires to transcend a simple experience of listening, transforming into a practice that reshapes how we perceive the world. For Hertz and Dough, art is not about offering fixed answers but about serving as a medium that opens the senses of the audience and shares an attitude through which the world may be seen anew. In Sonic Planet, sound becomes a language for exploring beyond boundaries, prompting us to reconsider our place within the multilayered reverberations created together by human and nonhuman. Biologist David G. Haskell writes, “Our greatest fear should perhaps be that we have forgotten how to listen to the living Earth.” His words recall the urgency of listening to the voices around us, which has become more critical than ever. In this moment of recognizing the loss of myriad sounds, we must once again be attentive to our surroundings―so that in communion with the Earth we may create resonances for coexistence.
Close your eyes, and listen―to the trembling vibrations, to every passing sound.
