Since 2017, the Buk-Seoul Museum of Art has been experimenting with flexible communication with audiences through its Vacant Space Project, displaying artworks in spaces other than exhibition halls.
The 2025 vacant space exhibition “Sonic Planet – Hertz and Dough” continues this approach, inviting visitors to sense both their own sounds and those of surrounding beings, and to feel the resonance of coexistence.
The participating artist team Hertz and Dough is also the first artist group to launch the museum’s “Artist Research” program, which explores the ways in which artistic inquiry and contemplation expand within the creative process. They perceive the world through sound and develop their own narratives by studying the act of listening itself. In the world of sound, where technology and ecology, human and non-human, space and environment intersect, they are asking questions about what and how we hear and understand.
The exhibition proposes the following attitudes to create different access points to connect with each other through sound. First, rather than looking for more, close your eyes and listen to the sounds of the here and now. Second, establish listening as an active act rather than mere reception; and third, move beyond an anthropocentric auditory experience to a more sensitive observation of the diverse sounds of the planet. Through these approaches, the soundscape that surrounds us may be transformed into a complex “sonic planet”a sensory field of sound environments.