A deaf sound artist

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Christine Sun Kim, deaf from birth, creates art at the intersection of sound, language, and music.

From Medium:


Can you tell me about the various ways that you experience sound without hearing it? I'm curious how this ties into your artwork and the various ways you explore.

For a piece called "Feedback Aftermath," I played with feedback for hours one night and then went home. At home I didn't feel good — [I] felt anxious. I couldn't sleep well that night, and I didn't want to go back to the studio for one week. That was disconcerting. And then when I watched the video of myself — because I videotape myself sometimes — I felt sort of stressed out and uneasy. Later I realized that it had an impact on me, an extreme impact, like post-traumatic stress. Most hearing people don't experience that. You have warning signals. If your ears hurt, you leave the room, you stop, you step away. I don't have those signals, so I went past all warnings and experienced feedback to the full degree.

I Am a Deaf Artist Redefining "Sound" (TED Fellows on Medium)