Mikael Hwang

Signal is a “living” playable music installation mediated by a microorganism. Building on the scientific, artistic, and theoretical contributions of James Gimzewski, James Pelling, Anne Nimetz, and Sofia Roosth, the project explores our relationship with yeast as a nonhuman entity, aims to attribute agency to it, and scrutinizes the anthropomorphic limitations of such efforts.

The artwork integrates biology, sound, light, and space across its three components: the object, the music, and the installation. This culminates in an immersive, acoustic pavilion that transports viewers into the microscopic world of yeast. Central to this experience is a custom-designed LP record in an incubator player, which plays translated sounds of the yeast cells it houses into anthropomorphic music.

Yeast has played a pivotal role in human civilization and scientific exploration, being extensively tasted, smelled, touched, and imaged, yet its sounds have not been heard. By integrating the sounds of yeast into a record—a semiotic device of mindful listening—the project seeks to grant yeast agency within a sonic shrine dedicated to its cellular milieu. This endeavor, however, confronts the challenges of anthropomorphism, raising questions about the authenticity of representing yeast in this manner.

Despite efforts to genuinely respect, mediate, and comprehend yeast's existence through advanced technological and posthuman philosophical frameworks, escaping anthropomorphic perspectives proves difficult. Are we allowing yeast to 'speak,' or are we speaking on its behalf? Can the sounds derived from yeast, transduced through several acoustic technologies, truly represent its essence? Can we rely on hearing as a mode of interpretation if it is a product of human sensory experience and does not exist beyond human perception? And if we manage to interpret yeast's signals, who determines the meaning behind this translation, distinguishing signal from noise, and its cultural interpretation?