Category Archives: Collaborators

Music For Dance

Collaborators, Compositions, Research, , ,

I have been writing and performing electronic music for dance for more than a decade. I learned so much from choreographers, and I look forward to working with them more in the future. Here’s a documentation of my music for dance so far.

Improvisation with Megan Bridge at Philadelphia City Hall (2012)

My dance collaboration started as an improviser. Megan Bridge of the Fidget and I met in Philadelphia, and we had many improv sessions. May sessions I had with the dancers during my Philly years (2008-2014) made me a better musician and listener. Below is another improvisation project with Erick Montes, Eunjung Choi, and Guillermo Ortega Montes.

The strangest thing (2014)

When I moved to Oberlin, I was fortunate to work with Holly Handman-Lopez. I was involved in producing an evening-length show about the woman suffrage movement. My role was to compose music with a short deadline and multiple changes/edits. I learned how to communicate with choreographers and dance production staff. Unfortunately, I do not have footage of the actual performance, but below are a promo video (with someone else’s music) and a recording session of a piece used in the show.

In Detroit, my current stomping ground, I continue to work with the dancers with different roles. In 2021, I worked with IS/LAND as a technologist. I provided an electromagnetic instrument that made sounds as the dancers approach an object. I was happy to be a part of a production as non-composer or non-performer (but still as a musician)

Invisible Embrace by IS/LAND (2021)

Last April, Biba Bell and I collaborated to make a 60min site-specific piece for dance and electronic ensemble. My job was to make music and direct an ensemble consisting of nine electronic musicians. It was the largest work I have ever worked on in terms of the number of people involved. The documentation of the work was also excellent.

A Dream Is A House for remembering the future (2022)

My most recent collaboration is with Joori Jung of Artlab J. Through this collaboration, I worked with a Pansori singer to compose a 20min music. The collaboration also took me to a new stage. I never thought my music was going to be on an Asian Culture Showcase! The video documentation is on the way, but here are pictures of the rehearsal.

Dance and music are time-based arts, and dancers and musicians learn from each other. I am grateful that I had opportunities to work with excellent choreographers and improvisers. I look forward to doing more projects with movements! I am not a dancer myself, but I am studying the relationship between movement and sound. Check out the video below!

update: 11/25/2025

Here’s my recent work with Biba Bell. More info is on a separate blog.

update: 2/16/2026

Breathing Land, a dance collaboration with Artlab J, is now available online to watch. Here’s a blog about it.

A DREAM IS A HOUSE for remembering the future

Collaborators, Compositions, Performances, Uncategorized, , ,


A DREAM IS A HOUSE for remembering the future from Biba bell on Vimeo.

A DREAM IS A HOUSE for remembering the future, created in collaboration by Biba Bell (Dance) and Joo Won Park (Music), is an hour-long immersive performance created for twenty-one Wayne State University (WSU) dancers and the WSU Electronic Music Ensemble in Minoru Yamasaki’s McGregor Conference Center atrium. A DREAM IS A HOUSE brings together sound, light, movement, embodiment, and storytelling together in the cathedral-esque modernism of Yamasaki’s architecture, evoking creative research driven by memory palaces, buildings as bodies, dream scenes, dancing with ghosts, and personal and collective ritual making. – from Vimeo site

My ensemble (EMEWS) and I worked with Biba and her Dance Class to make a site-specific, multi-channel piece over the Winter 2022 semester. The above is an excerpt of a 60-min piece. McGregor Hall’s architecture and acoustics were ideal for music and movement. I am happy about the result. The in-person experience was something unique, but Noah Eliott Morrison‘s team documented the essential experience of the piece in the video. 

Although EMEWS has worked on the piece since March, I started working on it in August 2021. Biba and I spent Fall 2021 trying ideas and finding voices. The video below is a shorter version of A DREAM…  presented at an end-of-semester showcase.

A dream is a house for remembering the future 12.07.21 from Biba bell on Vimeo.

The Fall version’s 15min stereo audio expanded to a 60-min piece for a laptop ensemble and a guitarist, each emitting sounds from a portable amp. The music evolved and adjusted every week as the choreography changed, and the ensemble ended up performing based on the score below.
I think music can have an altered life. I plan to perform an audio-only ensemble version in an upcoming show. Let’s see how it goes. 




HUMAN: a multi sensory puppet experience for ages 5+

Collaborators,

I worked with Asheville Creative Arts and Nehprii Amenii (Khunum Productions) on a puppet theatre piece over the past nine months. My role was to provide post-apocalypse underwater sounds as a sound designer. HUMAN ran for two weeks in May. Pictures and links below show some scenes from the show.

More info is here. Audiovisual documents will be published soon!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CdinWgfOVEL/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CcgA-9CgSZB/

Forms to Ponder

Collaborators, Compositions, Research

Forms to Ponder is a collaborative EP with Theodosia Roussos. The nine tracks in the album relate to each other in many ways. It is a culmination of my musical practice for the last six months.

Program

A form in music connects what we hear now to what we heard before. When we notice the form, we can also expect what may come next. Tracks in this album have forms best expressed with recorded sounds and digital music technology. Amidst the unfamiliar electronic sounds, I hear delightful relationships unfold. Creating and listening to this album was a fun memory game for me, and I hope to share that feeling with you.

The included bonus item is a production map that connects one track to another. More information and an explanation of how and why I made this album is available at www.joowonpark.net/cmpe.

Computer Music Practice: Forms to Ponder

Tracks in Forms to Ponder features audio apps and processes I developed for Computer Music Practice Examples (CMPE). CMPE’s goal is to show how and why I use technology to make music. The only way I know how to create the sounds and forms featured in this EP is by using digital technology. There are musical expressions only possible when sounds turn into data. The video below elaborates this idea with the usual block diagrams and Google slides.

Piano Triplets – Park & Starkey

Collaborators, Compositions, Uncategorized, , , ,

My friend and musical role model Starkey released a collaborative album. In technical terms, it is a project extended from ISJS. In aesthetical terms, the project is about restraints and forms. Personally, and most importantly, it is two friends saying ‘hey!’ to each other.

Starkey joins friend and composer Joo Won Park for an EP entitled “Piano Triplets” on NOREMIXES. The release showcases Joo Won Park’s unique supercollider processing over Starkey’s production samples. Three unique pieces, each consisting of only three samples: hardware and software synthesis meets piano in these short bursts of experimentation.

Bandcamp album description