This event is free and open to the public.
This talk will introduce Yasunao Tone’s works for the CD player (1985 to present) alongside the longer arc of his project to convert the written characters from ancient Chinese and Japanese poems into sound (1976 to present). While these two bodies of work are intertwined, they also are methodologically at odds: the CD works are self-consciously medium-specific, while the poem-based works follow the Fluxist tradition of Intermedia, of which Tone was one of the earliest theorizers. This talk will untangle these competing impulses in Tone’s practice, exploring by way of Friedrich Kittler’s Aufschreibesysteme the utility of our art historical concept of medium.
Godfre Leung is associate professor of art history at St. Cloud State University and is currently in Vancouver as a visiting scholar at UBC’s department of art history, visual art and theory. His writing has recently appeared in Afterimage, Art in America, Art Journal, ASAP/J, and Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, as well as publications by the Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center. He is currently working on his book manuscript Playback: Perceptual Attention in the Age of Digital Audio.
