Musician/Artist Samson Young Searches For Meaning In Our Hypermedia World

In our “hypermedia” world, everything is connected, shared and asynchronous, and the development of technology causes messages to mutate on a daily basis. Our lives are inundated with information from all kinds of gadgets, and our existence within this multimedia integrated environment has become something of an art form in itself. Since the early 20th century, the avant-garde movement has expanded our notion of what art is and what form it may come in with the emergence of conceptual art, performance, and installation, and the boundaries between mediums continue to blur and evolve. Artists have started to emphasize the ideas behind their works, connecting form to content.

Now artists have shifted from exploring one single medium to several, while keeping their primary techniques as a starting point. As the term “multimedia” is solidified in our common lexicon, artists rarely feel the need to commit to one craft or media anymore.

New media artist Samson Young was trained as a classical composer. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. in Music Composition at Princeton University while teaching at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong. Like many other artists, Samson did not fulfill his creative desire within his initial field of music; rather, his passion for new technologies has driven him to develop artwork within a range of diverse media forms.

Samson’s work includes musical compositions, video game installations, installations that incorporate coin-operated amusement rides, compositions for user-friendly iPad and iPhone orchestras, and audiovisual theater. Though he has jumped around a bit, we can see a clear relationship between music, his long-term practiced art form, and all other projects he completes.

“Princeton University teaches music in a transitional way,” Samson says. “Meanwhile, we are open to new things that other music courses have not obtained. For example, electronic music. The school believes a musician cannot avoid technology, [so] we had a computer programming course. That’s when I started to do new media art.”

Samson’s iPhone Orchestra in the Shenzhen & Hong Kong 2009 Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture required no musical background knowledge from its participants. Samson composed several pieces to be open for improvisation. Using a downloadable mobile app, everyone was able to take part in the performance and “play in an orchestra.”

Samson’s latest work,

Sound Cloud

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“Sound Cloud” is a continuous project for which Samson is making music through circuit bending. It’s a site-specific sound and light installation for the Bond Store at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Hundreds of microtonally-tuned sound-making microprocessors are dispersed throughout the venue to create a sea of intense beating frequencies that change as audience members turn their heads and move through the space.

Machines for Making Nothing #1: Triumph of the Spectacle

Machines for Making Nothing #2: How Time Flies

These works make obvious reference to Guy Debord’s" The Society of the Spectacle" by hypnotizing the viewer with nonsense interactions, for which the output is randomized text reading, "Triumph of the Spectacle." Maybe Samson wishes to comment on the superfluous relationship we keep with screens and interfaces in today's daily life. The "Non Sense Machine" demands a nonsensical usage, typical of the first Dadaist performances.

GameBoy Haiku

These GameBoys are programmed to display an animation of a single Chinese character fading in and out of sight. Fourteen of these GameBoys, when lined up together, compose a haiku that reads:

用日貨批評日本的一種精神分裂: schizophrenia typified by using Japanese products to criticize Japan
精神分裂: schizophrenia
精神分裂日本: the schizophrenic Japan
用精神分裂日本: to mentally break up Japan
日本分裂精神一種: one kind of Japanese divisive mentality

This work is currently showing at the Jenkins Johnson Gallery in New York.

Images courtesy of Samson Young.