Che Chen is a sound and visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. As a solo performer, Che uses stringed, wind, reed and percussion instruments, tape machines, film projectors and other objects in works that explore his interests in perceptual phenomena and folk and ritual musics from around the world. Che’s current performances utilize acoustic sound sources and tape machines placed in various locations around the performance area in order to explore the phenomena of difference tones (closely tuned pitches that result in beating patterns), phase relationships, repetition, the spacialisation of sound and the relationship between “audience” and “performer”.

New instruments/structures, redundant tunings, simple harmonic relationships, sympathetic vibrations. the basic idea: one sounds because of its likeness to another of the same (or a harmonically related) pitch. these two vibratory bodies reinforce one another even as they decay; each slowing the other’s return to stillness.

ISSUE Project Room’s Emerging Artists Commission program is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.