Perception of Arts | Inside Out: A Conversation with Heehyun Chun
- ELSEHERE
- Jun 9
- 10 min read
Updated: Jun 30
Heehyun Chun composes original soundtracks for film, live performance, and immersive installations, integrating modular, Eurorack, and electronic instrumentation to expand the boundaries of auditory experience. Through computer-based MIDI orchestration, she reimagines Western orchestral instruments to suggest the timbral qualities of traditional Korean instruments such as the gayageum, haegeum, and janggu, bridging cultural memory and contemporary sonic exploration. In this live conversation, Chun takes us behind the complex architecture of her machinery to trace the quiet turning points of her displacement, revealing how personal memory and institutional friction slowly reshaped her creative path.
ELSEHERE: History is not only archived in museums or written in books. It also lives in choices, in bodies, in what we keep and what we hide. Here, we speak with artists slowly, and we look at works carefully. In this room, we listen for the turning points that shape an artist, and we look for the blind zones that shape the work. Inside Out brings the unseen into view. Today, we are joined by Heehyun Chun.
If we are to trace the very beginning of your creative journey, where should we begin to listen?
Heehyun Chun: Yes. I think that is the best place to begin with music. I remember that I began playing piano when I was five. That memory is still very clear to me. I remember one song, “Clementine,” an American folk song. I played it more than a thousand times, the same melody again and again. I think that repetitive memory of practice was really the beginning of my musical life.
After that, when I went to middle school, I started playing violin. One of my friends was a vocalist, and we wanted to have our own band. Another friend played bass, so I had the option of playing guitar or drums. I chose guitar. Since I had already learned violin, I was more drawn to melody, and I always preferred lead guitar to second guitar. It was not because I was especially great at guitar, but because I loved playing solos. I think that was also the beginning of composition for me.
Then, when I had to go to college, I chose music production and sound design for visual media as my major, so I went to school in San Francisco. There, I learned how to compose music, how to score for film, and how to do sound design, things like sound effects and sonic textures. I also learned Pro Tools for recording, Sibelius for orchestration, and Logic Pro for composition. So I learned a lot of technological tools at that school. It was a really important place for me to begin. That was my basic background.
ELSEHERE: What is the earliest memory you have of really looking at something, not just seeing it? It does not have to be art. It could be a face, a room, or a certain quality of light.
Heehyun Chun: I have to say again that it was my piano studio. It was very small, and I remember bright sunshine always coming from my left side. I do not really remember how I played piano then, but I remember that image very clearly. The light itself feels like part of the memory of learning. I do not know whether the memory is so clear because I practiced the same thing again and again, but the environment stays with me strongly. When I think of my first memory, that is one of the clearest images.
ELSEHERE: Knowing that your family background is also deeply rooted in the arts, did this sensitivity to visual and textual materials begin early on? Is there a language, relationship, or visual memory from where you grew up that you keep trying to reconstruct in the work, or maybe escape from, or both?
Heehyun Chun: My older brother is a painter. When we were growing up, I saw his drawings, and he had many books on his bookshelf. When I looked through those books, I was inspired by fine artists and other kinds of visual artists.
Sometimes the books included languages I could not read, Japanese or Chinese or others, but I could still see the drawings and images. I think I imagined a lot through those visual materials. So yes, I keep reimagining those memories.
ELSEHERE: In your sense, what is the difference between music and sound?
Heehyun Chun: Music and sound are the same, I think sound is the element. If you put together those elements, it can become music. I think of it like ingredients. You put many ingredients together, and that becomes the dish.
ELSEHERE: I love that metaphor. If sound is your ingredient, how do different environments change the palette you work with?
Heehyun Chun: In New York, I cannot see nature in the same way as I could in California, unless I go upstate or into the mountains. In San Francisco, nature felt enormous and immediate. Here, it is different, but maybe because of that difference I became more aware.
I always carry my phone and record sound. I record wind, birds, leaves shaking, and if I am in the city I can also record the subway. Those are completely different sound worlds. Through that contrast, I began to experience the world as made of very different sonic cultures, and that changed me.
ELSEHERE: Speaking of distinct sonic cultures, was it this search for different environments and ways of thinking that pushed you to make a shift? What made you want to leave your home country and come to the United States as an immigrant artist?
Heehyun Chun: My family is in Korea, and that is the main reason I would want to remain there. But here, I can read many different books. I love libraries, and I love going to independent bookstores. Through books and cultural places here, I feel that I can encounter many different artists and many different ways of thinking. That is one of the reasons I love being here.
ELSEHERE: Was there a moment in your past that quietly changed your worldview?
Heehyun Chun: I think New York changed me a lot. I live in Brooklyn, and I started going to many experimental music shows and experimental art performances. That changed me.
Before that, much of what I learned in music technology and composition was technical. I had classes where the final assignment was to make sound in the style of major film composers like John Williams or Michael Giacchino. We had to recreate a similar kind of sound. That was good training, and it gave me a strong foundation, but it was not really creative in the way I needed.
When I encountered other artists doing things that were truly their own, each with a different philosophy, a different culture, and a different way of thinking, it changed me. Living in New York changed me because I saw that people could make work from their own language and not only from established models.
ELSEHERE: Was there a person, a rule, or an atmosphere that quietly defined what you were not supposed to notice, or not supposed to express?
Heehyun Chun: Going to university in San Francisco was a shock to me because it was so different. If I had not gone there, I do not think I would have had so many chances to learn so much. Going to San Francisco, and more broadly to the United States, changed me.
As an Asian woman coming from Asian culture, it can be very difficult to live here, but at the same time it gave me a space where I could express what I wanted and become the person I wanted to become. Just living here allowed me to be more myself.
ELSEHERE: Is there someone from your past, not necessarily a mentor or a major figure, maybe even someone you only met once, who said or did something that stayed with you?
Heehyun Chun: Maybe professors. Some professors stayed with me strongly. It was a difficult time. Some classes were not very good for me, though some were. Because I went to an arts university, there were also very strict rules.
I was also an instructor at a university for three years, and that experience made me think differently. I believe creativity is more important than rigid structures. If a student breaks a structure, I do not think that is necessarily bad. Training can be useful, but too much strictness can be harmful. So some of those memories were not very good, but they taught me what kind of teacher and artist I want to be.
ELSEHERE: Was there a moment when you felt there were two lives in front of you, and you chose the one that was harder to explain? If you go back to that turning point now, would you make the same choice?
Heehyun Chun: I think choosing music was that harder road. I want to write music because through music I do not always have to explain myself. If I let people listen, they can feel whatever they feel. I do not have to explain everything in words. That is one of the reasons I prefer to do this.
Choosing a harder road has always been difficult. I think everyone has that kind of difficulty. I talked with friends who were also dealing with similar situations, similar struggles. Looking back, if given the chance to go back to the turning point, I think I would make the same decision. Even if things were different, I would still be the same person. So whatever decision I made, I have to accept it and stand by it.
ELSEHERE: Looking at your workspace, it seems you’ve constructed a very personal, intricate environment. Could you take us behind the machinery and share with us what defines this tactile, modular system you have built?
Heehyun Chun: This is my Eurorack modular system. I think I have around twenty modules. I also use Moog instruments, including the Mother-32, DFAM, and the Moog Grandmother. It is analog synthesizer equipment, mostly for monophonic sound rather than chord-based polyphonic playing.
You cannot really play a full chord in the same way you would on a piano. It is more about working with single lines, single tones, and shaping sound itself. If you mix and match modules, you can create your own sounds, and that is what I prefer. I like to make my own sounds. That is part of my experimental practice. I collected it by myself. The parts are from different companies. I bought the Eurorack case and then gathered the modules one by one. It is not a single pre-built object.
ELSEHERE: In your own creative output, is there a decision in your work that you made and still do not fully understand? No regret, just something you know you chose, but are not fully sure why.
Heehyun Chun: Yes. In one of my pieces, there is a moment when the woman stands up, and that is the moment where the music changes from minor to major. It did not have to change there. I could also have paused the music or stopped it to emphasize the scene. That might also have worked. I made the change instinctively, and I still think about why I did that.
ELSEHERE: That specific instinctual shift happened within your work, Chimera. What makes this piece so foundational to your current practice? What makes that work important to you?
Heehyun Chun: It is important because I composed it very much in my own way. I used a pentatonic scale in the composition. That was important to me because the actor was Asian, and I felt that the emotional expression of the film did not need too much. Five tones, or that more restrained approach, felt enough to express the feeling.
Even if I used instruments that might sound more American or Western, if I put Asian tonal material into them, the combination could work very well. That mixture was meaningful to me.
ELSEHERE: Did you take any risks in making it?
Heehyun Chun: My whole process is a risk. I am not the kind of person who thinks through the entire music before I start. I open Ableton, open the MIDI track, and begin putting in notes. That is how I start.
Sometimes people build the notes first and later change instruments, or they follow a more planned method. I work in the opposite direction. I just begin. I put the MIDI in first, and from there I try to imagine the scene, the characters, and what they are feeling. That beginning is always a risk, but it is also the way I work.
ELSEHERE: This inverse process allows the visuals to grow out of the sound, rather than the sound merely serving the frame. Are you also exploring this relationship from a post-production standpoint?
Heehyun Chun: Yes. I wanted to share something from my post-production work. I am using Max and Ableton to create visual representations of sound, so people can see frequencies as well. I want people to see sound, or at least to perceive it visually, because we cannot normally see music. If they can see a visual structure of low, middle, and high frequencies, I think it becomes easier to understand sound and music in another way.
ELSEHERE: We have covered a great deal today, your personal history, the way you look at work from the maker’s perspective, and your own process. Is there something you said today that you had been thinking for years, but had never quite said this way before?
Heehyun Chun: Yes. I had prepared papers because you had sent me a general outline before, so I thought I needed to prepare. But this was more improvisational. I love improvising in music, so this felt almost like a performance. I liked that a lot.
Also, when I talked about my brother and my childhood, that surprised me. Those memories came back in a way I had not expected.
ELSEHERE: If someone studies your work fifty years from now and finds this conversation, what do you hope this interview tells them?
Heehyun Chun: I hope it tells them that I was simply living my life and making music because music is an important way for me to express myself. I also hope people can feel from this that it is okay to express themselves in their own way.
Heehyun Chun's Work
About Heehyun Chun
Heehyun Chun is a composer and performer who transforms sound into music, crafting immersive and evolving soundscapes in which music assumes the narrative role traditionally occupied by sound effects. Her work invites audiences to experience sonic texture as an integral cinematic language rather than a supporting element. Drawing on modular synthesis, Eurorack systems, gayageum, haegeum, and janggu compositional structures, she creates richly layered auditory environments that develop organically within filmic and performative contexts.Rooted in a Korean identity shaped by her upbringing in Korea and her musical training in the United States, Chun’s practice is grounded in interdisciplinary inquiry, experimental performance strategies, and a sustained commitment to expressing cultural identity through sound.
About Inside Out
Inside Out is ELSEHERE’s long-form conversation series, published through STRATUM. It begins from the belief that before artists are understood through category, institution, or medium, they must also be encountered through the deeper structures that shape a practice over time: memory, method, contradiction, relation, and the conditions of life pressing from within the work. This conversation with Heehyun Chun has been transcribed and edited from a live recording for publication.
Edited by Yuyang Hu
Comments