Spaces with Ears — Ear zero

Artist Statement:

Only our ears are turned

backwards, like traps.

Ivy Fu’s newest project Spaces with Ears is an ongoing curatorial and community-driven nexus of works that examines the use of monitoring technology, its transgression taken on one’s territory of body and self, and the ambiguity between the speaker and the listener in the current age. In recursive processes, the ears invert out as the only sounding instrument and the vocal cord implodes in the attempt of speaking; within the infinite noise of feedback, we become the body without organs of Deleuze and Guatarri's fable.

 The current iteration of Spaces with Ears – Ear Zero at FAVA features her collaborative work Ear Zero with Ada Wu in their artist duo The Universal Machine as a centerpiece to explore the experience of self-implosion under monitoring technology. Grounded by Ivy’s newly published article on Spaces with Ears: Acoustic Ecology Beyond the Body, Ear Zero extends invitation to a wide range of Oberlin artist such as Dasha Klein, Eoin Schnell, Autumn Culp, Fae Ordaz, Penina Biddle-Gottesman, Julia Collins, Antonina DiValentin and Joshua Reiner for their interpretation of the theme and site-specific activations in conversation with its interactive structure. It is also proud to welcome the premiere of Manifesto [VI], a composition with eye-tracking goggles by Jack Hamill that is written for Ivy Fu and Joshua Reinier, and Flesh + Data / Processing…, a Modern Music Guild concert with artist Amy Zuidema parsing through trauma that has been imposed on the body through historic and personal narrative, followed by a rendition of John Cage’s Ryoanji shared among Amy, Ivy and members from the Modern Music Guild.

Bio:

The Universal Machine is an artist duo comprised of Ada Wu and Ivy Fu. The Universal Machine develops strategies of survival and coexistence within systems of control through creating self-constructed intelligent systems and sensitive spaces. Working with a Derridean sense of language and experimental sound practices, they seek to embody silence and the unutterable. they parse through our personal histories and narratives, conjuring a form of absence into existence.

Ivy Fu is a sound artist, curator, and a researcher of sensory spaces currently studying at Oberlin Conservatory’s TIMARA program under Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and Eli Stine while finishing her college degree in Art History. Using generative visuals, communication technology, and homemade circuits in conjunction, she creates works of multimedia installations, intelligent systems, and self-regenerative ecosystems for topics of fractured identity, politics of sound and ownership of the body.   In her writing she likes to consider ways in which new technology complicates our sense of reality.

Her work has been featured on music festivals such as Ensemble Evolution, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, and the Atlantic Music Festival.

Ada Yueting Wu is an interdisciplinary artist working in sound, installation, and performance. She creates happenings that interrogate the production of silence and truth within systems of control. Her practice arises from her family’s silence on generation trauma, the unseen workers that constructed her home city, and the control of language and movements throughout her childhood. Her practice critiques systems of control through negotiating authoritative truth with counter narratives, and unearthing conflicts and contradictions.

Wu is currently pursuing her BFA in sculpture with a concentration in computation, technology, and culture at Rhode Island School of Design.