Blue Air is a video collaboration between Shatin and artist SoHyun Bae. They first met at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts where they were studio neighbors who were moved by each other’s art. The current project began with a conversation at SoHyun’s studio, with Judith recording her painting as well as their conversation. Blue Air itself began as an extended conversation with SoHyun sending paint marks to Judith, to which she responded with digital music, with the earlier recording as a key sonic source. She also drew on additional recordings that reflect her ongoing exploration of the enveloping sonic world, from chance encounters, such as the clink of glasses she recorded in Arezzo, to the spoken word, to delicate sounds of violin harmonics and a variety of extended techniques. SoHyun in turn arranged pain marks that responded to the sound as she worked on her Nature of Water series exploring the precariousness and fragility of life. The process was collaborative and iterative, finding ways to speak to one another through image and music. Finally, they merged, as described in Edith Wharton’s poem A Meeting, where they ‘…drink the blue transcendent air together….’
