Why Collaboration Matters in Music Tech-Duo Cichorium Speaks

My name is Jasmine Tsui. I also go by Jas-Tsui depending on the context of which I am performing. I would consider myself to this day an all-around sort of artist, but definitely my step into creation would have been music. And so I do dance, music, art. I studied as a percussionist. And so most of my foundation is in orchestral performance. But of course through the master's degree, I did a little bit of a pivot. I do more interactive and collaborative works that are a bit more experimental and contemporary.

Most of the work I do these days is part of Duo Cichorium, which is a duo comprised of Louis Pino and I. What we do is that we create a lot of improvisational frameworks, which then eventually result in pieces or suites. And so I would say artist, a percussionist, and a collaborator.

I'll talk broadly about my composition process first. It is always rooted in a lot of play. And it's especially important that I'm able to work with my friend Pino because I don't really have all that knowledge or the proper terminology of how to wire everything, how to set up this perfect amount of delay and have this effect happen in the speaker. So what often happens is that I will bounce ideas and concepts off of him and he will help realize them in a DAW or a Max patch. That’s how our compositions come together as a whole.

In that realm of play, we do a lot of experimenting. When I mentioned I don't feel like a composer, it's because often we're usually just trying things out, writing ideas, talking about whether we can get a sound to feel like we're in a cave and can hear the water dripping all around us, and the ocean in the distance. It's very multifaceted. There's drawing, electronics, a little bit of building, DIY instruments. And then of course, figuring out all the effects afterwards or during the process.

I think I'm a very visual-based person. If I'm thinking of delay and were to show a visual of it, it's almost like shouting into a mountain and hearing it echo back. But if I were to visualize it, it’s like seeing layers moving—the same image sliding over itself. You can change the frequency depending on whether you want that image sliding over itself very slowly, or if you want a big cascading gesture.

One of the pieces I was going to talk about today is called Feedback Dreams. It involves using a melodica, a music box, a no-input mixer, and a delay pedal. It’s a hodgepodge combination, but we found we could get my music box into the no-input mixer—Pino called it “seeding” it in. Then we fed the resulting sounds into a delay pedal. The delay was technically an effect, but we used the pedal as its own instrument, playing with the knobs and how they affected certain parameters on the no-input mixer, and also with the music box and melodica coming in through a contact mic.

Our piece Desiderium is part of our Elemental Suite, which is a large-scale work where each movement focuses on an elemental matter—air, fire, earth, and the one I’m talking about now, water. Creating this piece involved a lot of writing, almost poetic prose, because we were thinking scenically about how we wanted the piece to flow. In terms of imagery, the piece takes you from inside a cave to a beautiful beach island, and finally descending deep into the ocean.

For those three parts, we created different samples using DIY hydrophones and playing instruments underwater. After collecting those samples, we added delay, reverb, and effects, which helped expand the sound space. Even though we were in a little studio basement, delay helped us broaden the sound world to make it immersive and atmospheric.

Speaking on the Earth movement, it’s titled Morphogenesis. I built a six-foot-tall tree sculpture for it and created a video component that projected images onto specific parts of the tree. Handling the visuals felt like applying musical effects to what I was seeing. There were lots of layers. I think of that as delay. A slow crossfade into the same video feels like reverb—like you're seeing the same image cycle again and again.

For the audio portion of that piece, we used less delay and more distortion-heavy sounds. The imagery was centralized around the tree, but the narrative moved through a sunset, a night storm, and finally the sunrise after the rain. I like working in groups of three. Our sound design focused on evoking dirt and worms—something gritty and underground, like listening to the piece from inside a mound of dirt with ants.

I’m so thankful to have Pino in my life because the way we work is very complementary. I always have lots of ideas, sounds, and worlds I want to explore, but I don’t always know how to execute them. Having a translator like Pino who can bridge the gap between practical craft and music technology has been a game changer. The work we create doesn’t just live in one realm. We elevate it by combining music with visual art, theater, projections, sculpture, and more. It’s a rich environment to make music and art in.

If you're just starting out, one thing that makes it easier is finding a music technology friend. If you're more of an artist and less inclined toward music tech, find someone immersed in that world. Pino and I are very complementary—I'm the one who has the ideas, and Pino helps facilitate those ideas. I don’t know music tech. He does, but doesn’t have personal project ideas. That kind of collaboration has been the most fulfilling and enriching part of my practice.