iBuk-Seoul Museum of ArtJunggye-dong, Nowon-gu
A sound installation in which visitors turn handles to blend live audio streamed from around Nowon-gu with the imagined footsteps of a fictional stray cat, exploring whose sensory experience of the city counts as "normal".
Turn a handle on the big wooden structure in Lounge 3 and you hear gears and unbleached cotton grinding together, mixed with sound streamed live from five spots around the museum. Some of it has been shifted down from the ultrasonic range a cat hears into one you can. The cat is Cat A, a fictional stray SimLee Da Eun imagines wandering Nowon-gu every day.
This is Buk-Seoul's yearly Idle Space project, so the three works sit in the second-floor lounges rather than a gallery. An overhead camera tracks you and lays your route over Cat A's on a round screen in Lounge 2. Most Seoul apartment complexes already have a stray everyone has named; Buk-Seoul invented one and wired the neighbourhood so you can hear her rounds.
The museum says the work is completed by visitors, so come ready to crank rather than stand back. Entry is free with no booking, the SeMA app carries an audio guide, and Fridays run until 9pm.
The handle-cranked wooden structure
In Lounge 3, turning the handles folds the friction of gears and cloth into live street sound from five sites near the museum.
Your path on the round screen
In Lounge 2, an overhead camera films you and overlays your route on Cat A's imagined wanderings through Nowon-gu.
Universally Valid Forest
Open the wooden drawers to find soil the cat might have walked through, a favourite bird's feathers and small stones from a stream's edge.
You want to look rather than take part: the museum says visitors complete the work by turning its handles.