Philip Liu

​Asynchronous Concurrency, Sonic Lunar Topographer, and Le souhait sacré et profane are three artworks of an ART+SCIENCE collaboration project between the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and Philip Liu.

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In the exhibition space, a visitor becomes an entity floating in space, encountering various natural and artificial objects. The artist seeks extant dynamics of the Moon through moving loudspeakers, video, lights, and conceptual elements, suggesting three alternative perspectives for grasping the Moon in other ways. In one of the three corresponding works, Asynchronous Concurrency, the artist undermines (regards an object as a sum of properties) the Moon. It is an aesthetic subject that has accompanied humanity since its beginnings, and represents the oldest of clichés. Visitors are invited to explore whether this seemingly immutable Moon still holds the potential for transformation and whether there remain hidden elements yet to be uncovered.
Asynchronous Concurrency is an audiovisual installation investigating the average time difference of 1.3 seconds between the Moon and Earth, as well as imperceptible and non-anthropogenic vibrational phenomena occurring between them. The work utilizes lunar magnetic field data to modulate an analog audio synthesis system, inspired by a shift-register based, NASA's 1960s space mission circuitry, and also a delay effect based on the calculated real-time distance between the Moon and the exhibition space to generate sonic materials. This work metaphorically examines the lunar latent dynamic potential and its implications, specifically through its magnetic field. The accompanying computational visualizations synchronize with the audio components to represent cosmic vibrational propagation and transmission of faint nonanthropogenic information carried by them.