Regression – Vito Park

Pine was regarded as the most essential material for nurturing life and sending off the dead (養生送死), to the extent that it was said Koreans could not live without pine trees.
The inspiration for Regression began with a peculiar experience from my childhood, where I felt a deep oneness with the pine trees in a grove near my home. Is it possible to sense the spirit and establish a spiritual connection with nature, with a pine tree? The gentle breeze through the pine forest transforms into a pure and serene melody. Psithurism or Songroe (송뢰, 松籟), the sound created by the wind brushing against the pine tree, washes away my inner turmoil. How can this meditative joy derived from nature be audio-visually reinterpreted?
The work recreates the audio-visual experience of Songroe using songji—a traditional pine-based hanji paper. Hundreds of songji layers accumulated constructs a stereoscopic beauty of pine trunk. The layers of pine lacquer applied over the songji not only enhance the durability of the work but also represent a pursuit of the immutability and eternity of the image. Revered for its sonic qualities, hanji was used by Korean audio master Kim Jun for speaker cones. Hanji is not merely a documentational paper anymore, but a medium to transmit sound. When songji rustles by vibration, it sounds remarkably similar to the breeze through pine trees. Here, songji vibrates the sound composed from pine forest field-recording, transforming the work into a resonant object—where painting, instrument, and memory converge through the meditative process of layering and sound.
Video documentation: Vito Park