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
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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。」
「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.
my piece for Resonant Currents incorporates spatial audio design and a custom Max/MSP system that controls real-time interaction between sound and image. multichannel spatialization allows field recordings and synthesized textures to move through the environment, shaping how the audience perceives depth and scale. the Max/MSP patches modulate spatial trajectories and visual parameters in response to the evolving sonic materials, creating a performance in which audio and visual elements guide and transform one another.
*this embodied listening project is meant to be experienced in person. only a 40-second preview is available here.
03
■ Sonia Canvas
treating music not as a linear sequence, but as a dynamic architecture constructed from spatial components that unfolds in time, I independently designed and built Sonia Canvas to reimagine composition as an infinite spatial practice. motivated by persistent inquiries into the locus of musical intention and system autonomy, this component-based instrument replaces fixed timelines with a modular environment where composers construct immersive soundscapes by freely interconnecting sound nodes.
the system leverages generative AI to extend musical possibilities, yet strictly positions it as an assistive layer that amplifies rather than replaces creative intent, transforming the act of composition into a continuous negotiation between human agency and distributed algorithmic behavior.
04
■ 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 research-creation component that is currently in development.
05
■ Project Silver
Project Silver is a multi-part digital audio series that computationally examines demographic aging, focusing first on East Asia. the work translates a century of census data (1950–2050), including birth rates and age-stratified elder-population ratios, into an Ambient IDM / Electronic soundscape using a custom generative system I programmed.
all musical structures are programmatically derived: key demographic variables for each 10-year age bracket are mapped in real time to core synthesis parameters such as LFO depth, filter cutoff, spatialization, and reverb diffusion. this data-driven modulation framework forms the piece’s primary compositional engine rather than serving as a secondary aesthetic layer.
the resulting sonic trajectory traces a century-long socio-emotional arc, shifting from density and youthful dynamism toward increasingly unstable, fragile timbres. Project Silver invites listeners to hear demographic transition not as abstraction, but as a slowly accumulating pressure made perceptible through sound.
06
■ Sunset as Instement
Sunset as Instrument is an interactive synesthetic apparatus that translates the chromatic structure of twilight into a playable generative soundscape. using a custom program, the system constructs a 2D “sonorous field” in which pixel values from an image are mapped in real time to synthesis parameters: the vertical axis interpolates between the organic warmth of additive pads and the microscopic textures of FM synthesis, while the horizontal axis navigates a continuum between harmonic stability and stochastic dispersion.
by treating the ephemeral gradient of a sunset as a dynamic score, the work invites participants to perform the photograph, exposing the subtle correspondences between color, spatial geometry, and sonic behavior.
it asks, for instance: what might a La Jolla sunset sound like in November 2022?
07
■ when fluid no longer consents to form
in when fluid no longer consents to form, sound is not a representation of water but an articulation of its refusal. using entirely synthesized electronic signals, i construct a sonic environment in which liquidity resists containment, where structure gives way to continuous motion and stability dissolves into process.
the piece investigates the threshold at which vibration, turbulence, and perceptual ambiguity converge. by working with the microscopic behaviors of timbre and modulation, i approach fluidity as a dynamic system rather than an image, listening to matter as it destabilizes and reorganizes itself over time.
about
photograph by Sophie Dezhao Jin, taken in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, California.
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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, spanning electronic, acoustic, environmental, and noise, finds new materiality in space and atmosphere.
parallel to his sound art work, yi is an award-winning technologist conceptualizing new paradigms of human–ai interaction at Google. 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 human-computer interaction and sound art, moving fluidly between systems of technology and systems of sensing.
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sound speaks where language falls short. still, if words are what you have, feel free to reach out.