yi yang ｜ 杨一
i’m drawn to where reason dissolves into emotion, perception into abstraction, and all into a motley of sense and nonsense
practices
sound as a structural and spatial medium
by the way, I also design
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「夫 吹 萬 不 同，而 使 其 自 己 也。」
「夫 吹 萬 不 同，而 使 其 自 己 也。」
recent projects ▼
01
■ In Time’s Ruins
composed in 2024 by yi yang for In Time’s Ruins, a film by artist Astra Huimeng Wang, created for her second solo exhibition Polite Infidelity at Make Room Los Angeles. the soundtrack moves across states of genre and emotion — from textural ambience to fractured rhythm — tracing the film’s meditation on memory, decay, and tenderness.
The composition treats sound as sediment: something eroded, resurfaced, and reassembled. Blending electronic synthesis with field fragments and unstable harmonies, it mirrors the film’s shifting temporalities — where ruins are not endings, but places where time continues to breathe.
Due to copyright protection, only a 10-second preview is available here. The full film can be accessed at makeroom.la.
02
■ Resonant Currents
Resonant Currents is an evening of immersive sound curated around deep listening, featuring three artists from the forefront of China’s experimental sound scene: Zhuoling Wu, Snoww, yi yang. through three genre-fluid compositions, the program explores how sound mediates relationships between ecology, collective memory, and individual perception.
performed at Headlands Center for the Arts, California.
this project is a multisensory performance unfolding from sunset into night along the Northern California coast - an evening slowly co-constructed through sound, space, and the synesthetic perception of its audience. the night itself will become a living, time-based work in progress.
this project is meant to be experienced in person. only a 30-second preview is available here.
03
■ after the fire, the forest sounds again
in 2020, a wildfire swept through Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California’s oldest state park, burning nearly every structure and reshaping its ancient landscape. yet beneath the blackened trunks, life began to return — slow, quiet, persistent.
after the fire, the forest sounds again is a guided sound walk through this recovering redwood forest. using field recordings, spatial sound composition, and live environmental listening, the work invites participants to walk, pause, and attune to the subtle acoustics of renewal — the rustle of new leaves, the creak of hollow trunks, the distant rhythm of wings.
the project listens not for what was lost, but for what endures — how the forest reclaims its voice after silence, and how listening itself becomes a way to witness resilience.
welcome to book an in-person tour. only three sample tracks are available here.
The samples presented here are the musically and artistically processed versions. In parallel, the project also includes a set of raw sound materials—unprocessed ecoacoustic recordings.
04
■ when fluid no longer consents to form
in when fluid no longer consents to form, sound is not a depiction of water but its rebellion. using pure electronic signals, yi yang constructs a landscape where liquidity disobeys structure and form collapses into motion. The work listens to matter as it dissolves — tracing the thresholds where vibration, turbulence, and perception become indistinguishable.
about
photograph by Sophie Dezhao Jin, taken in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, California.
■ OUR STORY
yi yang 杨一 is a California-based sound artist exploring listening and composing as spatial and embodied acts. his practice treats sound as an architectural medium, transforming environments into resonant fields where perception becomes form. sound — electronic, acoustic, environmental, and noise — finds new materiality in space and atmosphere.
parallel to his sound art work, yi is an award-winning designer shaping new paradigms of human–AI interaction within Google Search. Born in mainland China and educated in Taiwan, Japan, and the United States at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, he draws from training in both visual design and sonic art, moving fluidly between systems of design and systems of sensing.
drop me a note
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sound speaks where language falls short. still, if words are what you have, feel free to reach out.