Resembling Shanshui - Tune to Site
Site-specific Performance Intervention with SlowQin (2012)
This serial performance uses the SlowQin as an augmented field recording instrument to research and form reactions to urbanisation. I travelled to megacities such as Beijing and Shanghai, playing the SlowQin on traffic islands amidst urban „nature.“
This performance references the historical motif of the solitary qin figure alone in nature, as depicted in traditional Chinese painting. These paintings typically show a Qin player travelling with the instrument and playing in places of outstanding natural beauty. By substituting natural environments with contemporary mega-cityscapes, skyscrapers have become the new mountains, highways, and rivers, and the SlowQin has served as the new Guqin. Like the ancient Qin player, the SlowQin player aims to react to or echo the „nature“ of the site. On the one hand, she improvises with elements that emotionally „speak“ to her and her body. On the other hand, the SlowQin listens to the site technically; the player can record multichannel sound, including the strings themselves, vibrations (with a sensor), wind (via a special pickup microphone), and the electromagnetic environment of the Hertzian space (via three axes of sensing coils). Thus, the SlowQin becomes a comprehensive interface for
collecting environmental data, including sound. Therefore, the on-site performances become a practice of augmented field recording. Besides becoming music in the performance, all recordings also serve as material for later compositions and installations.
Site-specific performance intervention with SlowQin - Beijing 2012
Site-specific performance intervention with SlowQin - Shangdong 2012
Site-specific performance intervention with SlowQin - Shanghai 2012