"They did not know the song. They did not know how to read it, nor were they certain how to vocalize it. A song filled with memory and emotion existed in a completely different way in another era."
Babble Song is a video work that explores how cultural memory and language transform across generations. Actors read lyrics familiar to a specific generation and alter them through humming and spontaneous utterances. We anticipate a certain rhythm and structure, yet the actors do not fulfill these expectations. This discordance becomes the focal point of the experiment.
A song originally carries the emotions and memories of a particular generation. However, when presented to another generation without context, it becomes nothing more than a textual record. As the actors read the lyrics, they struggle to grasp the intended meaning or fail to conform to the expected rhythm and structure. The words scatter, and the original emotional weight of the song dissolves. No longer existing in its familiar form, the song is reassembled and transformed, allowing language and sound to take on a new sensory dimension.
Babble Song is not merely a reinterpretation of a song. It examines how memories of one generation shift and evolve when passed down to another. The actors, framed as if they are test subjects, are recorded in fixed compositions. As fragmented pieces of language are vocalized, the audience witnesses the transformation of a song into text and its subsequent reconstruction into sound.