ZYKLOS
ZYKLOS (Melody Chua, Chi Him Chik // AIYA, Aiii) comes from a practice of working with sonic improvisation machines and reflecting on the relationships that arise and become destabilised in human-machine constellations. On the one hand, this context views the machines as extensions of our human mind-bodies, but crucially on the other hand, it is intentionally a resistance against treating the non-human in the colonialistic sense of imposing our identities and control over them. Instead, the practice of improvising with machines is that of creating “resistance machines” that challenges our human identities and languages. Through this practice, we form new sensitivities, ways of relating, and ways of knowing beyond the anthropologic gaze. In the context of improvisation, our primary working method, this implies a confrontation and continual negotiation with uncertainties—a more-than-human dialogue of understanding that takes the form of music-making, translation, and movement across different bodies, both visible and invisible.
Drawing upon our experience of working with machines, we seek to apply our practice of improvising with the non-human to relationships with our environments and what we come to understand as “nature.” We view nature as an ever-evolving ecosystem of old and new technologies that negotiate ways of relating with one another. We view the concept of “technology” as mechanisms that transform and translate energies and materials from one form to another. Even, or especially, a plant can be considered as an important representative of this definition of technology, as it transforms carbon dioxide into the oxygen that itself becomes translated throughout almost all forms of life.
