Helga R Fassonaki is a sound and intermedia artist currently residing in Los Angeles.   Her work involves interdisciplinary methods of practice, most notably experimental music, performance, film/video installation, and interactive art. She received her BFA at the University of California, San Luis Obispo in 2000 and her MFA from Auckand University, New Zealand in 2006. She has exhibited in New Zealand, Australia, Germany, France and the US, and has performed live sound works at numerous festivals in the US and New Zealand including S3D Ear and Eye festival in Auckland and Soundwalk in Long Beach.
 
   Fassonaki’s manipulated tape machines, sound generating wind turbines, and hand-cranked cardboard record players reveal the sonorous qualities of antiquated technology and simple, temporal materials that work their way into socially alerting contexts – blurring lines between science fiction and despairing social truths, between illusion and reality.  Growth, decay and transformation are significant processes that often shape the duration of her installations and performances. As she plays her records, the grooves gradually wear down and become undecipherable and the sound becomes the pathetic movement of parts. The time it takes for this deterioration to take place often sets the duration of the performance.

    Fassonaki uses sound as a building material – which like her installations, is unstable and open to change.  By allowing the ordered arrangements of her sound works to be interrupted by surrounding elements, she aims to create social arrangements where sound not only pushes and pulls its environment, but is transformed by it.  

     In the experimental noise duo Metal Rouge, she plays santur (Persian dulcimer) and pedal steel guitar with New Zealander Andrew Scott. Also unleashing her handbag of noisy transpositions under her solo moniker yek koo, Fassonaki has played in numerous galleries and venues in California, Portland and New Zealand.