In her most recent moving image work, Seo Hye Lee engages the language and enunciation of the British shipping forecast, which has become famous beyond its intended audience since the first broadcast 150 years ago. The shipping forecast is spoken in Received Pronunciation, an accent invested with social prestige and authority in the British Isles and beyond. Lee draws a parallel between the unknowable weather and the slipperiness of communication; the forecaster’s supposed authority and the practice of captioning, which we rely on to translate auditory information. Portland Forecast builds to a whorl of creative captioning, audio and sound description that goes beyond translation, and suggests that uncertainty and comfort might exist alongside each other.
Seo Hye Lee is a London-based South Korean deaf artist. Drawing on her personal experience of hearing loss and of being a cochlear implant user, Seo Hye Lee explores a world of sound and silence through the mediums of moving image, illustration and multi-sensory installation.