Tacto: The Departure is a sound work/music album by wellsgoodness (Inwoo Jung’s allias) corresponding to the Interactive LARP performance by Paula Pedraza which carries the same name and was originally drafted between 2021 and 2022. The project thematizes the situation of upcoming death and brings attention to the act of palliative care.
The album consists of 8 separate tracks which create a somewhat liminal almost ghostly atmosphere that manages to capture the temporal quality of end-of-life situatedness in sound. Inwoo Jung uses sampling, sound collaging and audio-fx processing techniques to achieve a clearly plunderphonic aesthetic which seems less concerned with recognizability than with treating audio as a material foundation in order to explore the vast ontological spectrum of human existence in between being, becoming, leaving and returning.


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TACTO: The departure turns its attention towards palliative care or end-of-life care, as taboo in western societies—a conversation that is usually avoided and too painful to address. Death had entered the realm of the artificial, its affective closeness refers to an unnatural event, and no filial structures or social ones, seem to teach us how to die. Probably death is the most anthropoid experience, as presented to us as an incommensurable, and inevitable condition that crosses all of us, organically and socially. Centuries of speculation around death, from the technological to the alchemical, seek remedy to the moment of death and make us closer to a physical form of immortality.

TACTO, instead, proposes a simulacrum of full embracement of that transit between the alive body and the dead one, as a poetical portal of companionship all the way on a simulated death clock, with characters dying, guiding or accomplishing missions to meet the final ‘desires’ of the almost gone one. This game does not focus on the afterlife only, but on the process towards it, as a cognitive space that physically unfolds in a location, with both creatures of the alive world and the passed away ones (ghosts).

Music represents more than anything else a neuropsychological response that impersonates emotions, and motivation, supports the affective appeal, and serves to recall memories or experiences lived before. LARP (Live art role play game) then seems like an accurate scenario to support interactions through the impact of sound. In the case of TACTO: The departure, it is a skeleton piece that holds the transitions between the different spaces and stages of the game.

Music in TACTO is an essential indicator that the veil of reality as we know it has fallen down. Visitors enter through a sort of reception for an imaginary palliative institution, a waiting room where the rules are explained, they transit through the corridors, and the character transformation room (changing room). Music is then during those processes an anticipation element that reruns on itself, creating ethereal iterations to encourage one to jump into the next stage, where we perceive the presence of voices, body pulse sounds, and ‘simulacrum’ sounds that summon memories of such real-life locations, like hospitals, corridors in care facilities, enchanted by eerie manifestations in the form of sound.

Sumire: (the Hauntant), is also a sonic agency, an active character appearing and disappearing in the game scenarios constantly, it is a ghost warning us of the presence of the afterlife and the in-between space it occupies, providing a sense of time disjoint and space/time shifts that are an essential part of the game.

Towards the end, each companion (visitor) of the dying patient in the game room, is a physical representation of the death clock leading to the end, as each visitor accomplishes their time slot in the game, a milk clock in another room is being filled to the top, as a form of commodified ‘share’ of the affective work, set into the patient and the whole structure of the game. Then also, an exciting soundtrack piece leads us to the end room, and a hybrid both alive and dead character takes us from the hand and helps us to say bye to our dying friend.

Caretakers, ghosts, best friends, and cute therapies took place during four hours game for the first time on the 23rd of January in the WELTKUNSTZIMMER - Duesseldorf.

written by Paula Pedraza


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Composed by Inwoo Jung
Produced by Inwoo Jung and Paula Pedraza
Mixed by Inwoo Jung
Mastered by Timm Roller
Published by 76666

Cover by Rainer Rudolf Benoit, taken from ‚Tacto: The Departure‘ Larp by Paula Pedraza on 23rd of Jan of 2022 at Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf
‚Waiting Room‘ and ‚Tacto‘ contain sounds sampled from the album ‚Delusive Tongue Shifts - Situation Based Compositions‘ by TIBSLC, published by sferic
‚Clutter Segments‘, ‚Covert Touch‘, ‚Sumire (The Hauntant)‘ and ‚Tremolo Melancholia‘ contain sounds sampled from the album ‚Zwischen‘ by Jan Jelinek published by Faitiche

13 Apr 2023 Soundtrack album released by 76666

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