ELSA PARK

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'Dysthymia’ is an electroacoustic piece that embodies a sense of lassitude and distress from accumulated everyday stress, exploring the empathic connection and gaps between different beings as to the low moods.

In the piece, the two different people were engaged as participants and two devices were used: Field recording, Brainwave data (EEG). Firstly, it is created from a field recording for a week of a person’s melancholic episodes in daily environments. Such as sounds - finger tapping, walking in the rain, flushing the toilet and people’s talks - are captured. This was also used as an outlet for the participant’s pent-up mood. And, composer’s emotional responses to the collected sound of emotions from field recording are placed in the piece through brainwave data (EEG) from the detector (Model: Emotiv Insight). During the stage, the composer was in the position of listener, observer, and second participant as to his chunks of low emotion. Lastly, the collection of data from the two processes are intermixed through synthesising. By doing so, it creates the form of composition derived from the chronological order of the participant’s recorded emotions– stress, escape, distress, lassitude, annoyance and embracement. Each sections consist of the pitch, octave, and rhythm data from the two devices while having distinct stories. Thus, on the sonic design from field recording and EEG data, engaging two different people, ‘Dysthymia’ is to explore the empathic connection and gaps between different beings in the perception of the pent-up daily low moods and to invite listeners to share the various shapes of depressed experiences.

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Composed by Elsa Jaeyoung Park 

Mixed & Mastered by Minchang Han