The Formless Track
A living Zen tradition meets digital culture
The Formless Track is a six-year collaboration between British artist and electronic music producer Arman Ray and Zen Master Hyon Gak Sunim, bringing spoken Zen teaching, electronic music and audiovisual practice into a single body of work.
The project explores how an authentic living Zen tradition can enter contemporary digital culture without becoming lifestyle spirituality, self-help branding, or commercialised wellness. Its central concern is simple:
Forms change. Transmission continues.
At its heart is the meeting of two forms of discipline: Zen practice and digital making. Spoken teaching, electronic sound, image, silence, rhythm and repetition are used not as decoration, but as ways of carrying attention. The work asks whether digital tools can serve practice rather than distraction, and whether ancient forms of insight can move through new media without losing their seriousness.
What exists now
Not Two
The latest completed full-length spoken-word electronic album.
The Formless Track
The original central work in the collaboration.
Form Is Emptiness
A related EP.
30-minute audiovisual film / screening work
A completed AV piece combining interview, music, image and contemplative visual structure.
Future live audiovisual possibility
A developing possibility for live audiovisual presentation from 2027 onwards.
The music sits between spoken-word electronic composition, Zen-techno, ambient structure and experimental audiovisual practice. The voice of Hyon Gak Sunim is not treated as a sample or decorative element, but as the living centre of the work.
Why it matters
This is not a conventional album campaign. It is a long-form cultural project about transmission, attention and form.
The collaboration asks:
How can Zen teaching meet contemporary digital culture without being diluted?
Can electronic music and moving image become vehicles for attention rather than distraction?
What does artistic responsibility mean when spiritual teaching, electronic sound, image and digital tools are brought together?
How can a non-commercial spiritual project find a place in a culture shaped by platforms, algorithms and paid visibility?
The project is offered in a spirit closer to dana — freely given support — than commerce. It is not built around selling access to teaching. Its aim is to open a space where practice, sound, image and contemporary culture can meet.
Possible angles
Music / electronic culture
A serious spoken-word electronic project combining Zen teaching, techno restraint, ambient structure and long-form collaboration.
Buddhist / contemplative culture
A living Zen teacher entering digital culture through music and image without reducing the teaching to wellness language or spiritual branding.
Film / audiovisual work
A completed 30-minute AV work with future potential for screening, gallery presentation or live audiovisual development.
Culture / academia / technology
A case study in contemplative practice, digital media, authorship, attention and transmission.
Previous coverage
Earlier works in the collaboration, including The Formless Track and Form Is Emptiness, received positive independent coverage, establishing the project as a serious and distinctive meeting of Zen teaching and electronic sound.
Not Two is the latest full-length continuation of that work.