This is Lucia Chungs artist bio.

Lucia H Chung is a Taiwanese artist based in London, UK. She holds a Master degree in Sculpture (Distinction) from Winchester School of Art and a PhD degree in Sonic Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London. She performs and releases music under the alias ‘en creux’ where the sound creation springs from her fascinations in noise generated via feedback on digital and analogue equipment, and her role as a mediator-performer in the multifaceted relationship between the sonic events incurring within the self-regulated system. She also works as a broadcaster and an independent curator at Happened. She has curated and organised residency programmes and music events around the UK and Europe, including a 3-month Taiwanese Experimental Music residency for MusicHackspace at Somerset House Studios in 2018, Inland virtual residency between lacking Sound Fest. (Taiwan) and IKLECTIK (UK) in 2020, and a panel discussion on video Game Music as part of Grounding Practice at Somerset House Studios in 2021.

INTERVIEW: LUCIA H CHUNG with ATTN: MAGAZINE

This interview with Lucia H Chung is about her work and current show about to go live in the coming weeks (at the time). They begin by asking her where the idea for a Taiwanese music festival came from.

She says it’s that whenever she goes to china town she sees lots of posters for Chinese and Japanese gigs and shows and she’d never see any for Taiwanese music apart from pop stars who come over.

They continue to ask about where the idea came from. The fact that she had this idea in her head for a while. How did this come to fruition?

She says she acts on impulse a lot and doesn’t think too much about the outcomes it’s more of a bottom-up process she says. On her trip to Taiwan, she didn’t really have a chance to go to loads of live gigs and instead went to record shops. She felt as she moved here as an international student back when she was studying her status was not certain but now it is she wanted to connect her people to where she lives now. Bring them over to experience new things.

The Water by en creux

I first listened to Fog after reading the bio of the album. This album was a two-track piece based on no-input feedback mixers. The two sides depict deficiency and surplus respectively: the first a semi-solid hum that flickers on the brink of becoming, the second a harsh buzz that presses into excess until it warps. Balance and stillness, so readily associated with a drone, are therefore illusory – only ever implied in the cancelling-out of these deviations from equilibrium, manifesting as a non-state framed by exertion, arriving within that silent pause between these two exquisitely manoeuvred tilts.

I did really find the first Fog song captivating. We’ve used no input mixing in the lectures with Milo and it’s interesting to see it in a real-world scenario. I find the laid back approach of letting the machine take the lead. Just guiding the sounds into drone sounds is really captivating. You get lost in the sounds and let the filters guide your thoughts.

https://hardreturn.bandcamp.com/track/fog

Post Lecture Reflection

Lucia began by speaking around the curatorial things she’s done, starting from monthly radio programs and artist interviews. And now the program has gone through transition and change she can reflect on it. So she usually loves to ask this as the first question in most of her interviews which is “What is your background? And how did you get where you are as an artist?”

I think this question makes sense it’s important to know someone’s background to see their bias and their motivation, why are they doing what they are doing?

For her, she moved to England when she started her masters at Winchester and she was one of two only non-English speaking people in her class. She didn’t find the English pub culture that interesting so she just sat in the background a lot, most likely as English wasn’t her first language, she felt she couldn’t community effectively. She found it interesting the gap between translation and how a person feels when they’re caught in this situation.

So for her, this was a huge inspiration. And she feels like her work has evolved from this experience. One specific project she did at her masters was related to photos. She was told she had a different personality between speaking mandarin and speaking English. And she wanted to put herself in front of the camera and study herself closely. She wanted to investigate this change.

She found in the photos she took when speaking mandarin were completely different to her speaking English. This invoked a deep question thought process for her and linked to other works.

She then spoke about her work in 2009, Spring piece stereo recording. She had just moved from Winchester to London, Newcross area and found it extremely busy and full of noise pollution. No longer in a lovely town but a busy area. She decided to record her window as she lived opposite the main road and used a piezo mic that she clipped to the window. She looped up the sound of the recording and played it back into the piezo mic, she stated it was one of her first loop/noise or no inputting mixing sort of work.

To her, it sounded like an angel or a flight to heaven. A really cool concept. I remember Cai using no-input mixing in the lecture with Milo, we were improvising as a collective and the sounds coming out of that machine were incredible. I can see how noise and noise pollution inspired her work. London is really a shock when moving here, I felt the same when I first moved from Brighton. A lot of sounds is overwhelming at first here.

I think overall that Lucias work is captivating and her expression on the day came through her presentation. I found that her curation relating to her heritage and also her self-aware state towards her current surroundings and how she can benefit that place whilst not taking away from it was a benefit to hear about.