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When we started the project on musical practices in Korea at the Museu de la Música in Barcelona in 2015, I was immediately certain about two things: that audiovisuals should play a central role in the project – and that the best way to do this would be by producing original materials in accordance with the needs of the project – and that the only person with whom I could imagine carrying out a project such as this was the audiovisual producer Ariadna Pujol.

Following many joint meetings to discuss the main aspects of the project (such as the need to focus more on musical practices than on music itself, the importance of the human element as the core of such practices and the weight of traditional and modern elements), we designed a work strategy, three categories of materials to be produced and a filming plan in order to achieve what we had conceived in accordance with the size of our budget.

With the invaluable support of the National Gugak Centre (National Centre for Traditional Music) in Seoul, we spent two weeks of intense filming there in a cold February in 2017.

We returned to Barcelona with a huge amount of material, which we used to produce the pieces that make up the three categories mentioned:

• Category I: A 14-minute-long main piece to be screened in the main hall of the exhibition. We wanted this to have a poetic approach and to be able to provide the audience with an “aesthetic” experience reminiscent of South Korea’s sound environment, its images and its movements but without conveying any specific information about musical practices. This was our main piece, the one which shares its title with the exhibition – Eolssigu!: The Sounds of Korea – and which you can watch on this link: https://vimeo.com/235767251
• Category II: The second category has a didactic purpose, as it teaches visitors about the various musical practices, showing them details and highlighting some of their relevant characteristics. These are short pieces, of between 2 and 6 minutes each, and we made 12 in total (plus two presenting subjects beyond musical practices), which you can watch here: https://vimeo.com/museumusicabcn
• Category III: This is composed of a single, clearly promotional piece, a teaser, whose main characteristics are brevity, intensity and the fact that it had to work both with and without sound (due to the needs of the spaces where it was screened). It has a duration of 59 seconds and is available to watch at: https://vimeo.com/235769690.

We spent many hours with Ariadna, discussing strategies for editing the materials and the components we had found, which we thought would help us convey what we wanted. Ariadna made an initial editing proposal for each of the pieces, and we worked together from there. All the pieces finally went through a colour correction stage carried out by Sophie Kölher. With regard to the main piece, Santi Berguñó joined the team to produce a sound design for everything we had imagined. Both tasks greatly enhanced the result of our work, and we are all very proud of the result we have achieved.

During this month of November 2018, the 8^th International Folk Music Film Festival of Kathmandu gave the award for the best short film to our main piece Eolssigu!: The Sounds of Korea (https://vimeo.com/235767251) and, although all this work came to life in the exhibition programmed as part of the 2017-2018 series, we would now also like to share our joy for this recognition.

Horacio Curti

Curator of the exhibition Eolssigu!: The Sounds of Korea

Ethnomusicologist

Lecturer in the Department of Musicology and coordinator of the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya’s Asian music programme.

Programme for the 8^th International Folk Music Film Festival of Kathmandu: http://www.nepalmusicmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/8th-film-festival-Catalogue-2018.pdf

Award winners at the 8^th International Folk Music Film Festival of Kathmandu:

https://www.facebook.com/infim2011/posts/2380331028705146

Details of the film:
Title: Eolssigu!: The Sounds of Korea
Ariadna Pujol: main camera, general director and producer
Horacio Curti: idea and coordination, second camera, sound recording and production
Santi Barguñó: sound design
Sophie Köhler: colour grader