The whole installation
Musical Sculptures
—The Echo of Aesthetic Synesthesia and Chinese Literati Culture
I am influenced by the concept of discipline in the classical period of China – there were no strict boundaries between art and other subjects; people were encouraged to be versatile. Based on my literature and music background, and with the faith of connecting relevant disciplines, I make a series of musical sculptures.
I use music as the form, and literature as the attitude. I always believe art contains the melody and rhythm from music and can be explained by literature. When I look for inspiration of my art creation, they give my artworks musical harmony and literary imagery. Most of the time, I combine these three elements in my creative progress by using the patterns and stokes to visualize the melody, creating titles to imitate the atmosphere of works after I finish, and writing poems to explain them.
This series of sculptures was inspired directly by musical instruments, and they are playable. They are made for myself, and for memorizing many afternoons that I had spent on practicing my cello in childhood. I love cello, but I hate to practice. I always wonder if I could create something I can play without practice, and I did. As the sculptures for audiences, there is a contradiction of fragility and participation. As the echo of my childhood, they are my orchestra that allows me to be lazy.
The first sculpture is named The Drop of Spring is Like Broken Jade. (jpg.1.0) It has eight ceramics plates with small rings, tiles, and panels on the top, and holes on the bottom. The way to play it is to put some little objects, such as balls, shells, or scraps on the highest plates, let them get through the holes, and finally fall into the lowest plates. The small objects will hit the plates and make the sound when they are free falling. Since I can change the position of where to start, each time of the objects’ paths are different, and the sound will also be changed.
The draft
jpg. 1.0 The Drop of Spring is Like Broken Jade, 2019
Plywood, ceramics, fishing threads, L: 137 * W: 40 * H: 192 cm / 54 * 16 * 76 in.
SEE THE DEMO OF THIS PIECE
jpg.2.0 The Sunlight is Dancing on Ice Cracks, 2019
Poplar wood, ceramics, L: 21 * W: 21 * H: 160 cm / 8 * 8 * 63 in.
The detail of The Sunlight is Dancing on Ice Cracks
The second sculpture is named The Sunlight is Dancing on Ice Cracks. (jpg. 2.0) It consists of a vertical fingerboard, fourteen keys arranged from small to large, and a stick with two "bells." The player places hands on either side of the fingerboard and moves the figures as playing the piano so that the keys will tap the fingerboard. According to the principle of music, when the keys are getting bigger, the tones are getting lower. Or the player can shake the stick and make a sound.
See the demo of this piece
The third sculpture is named The Stars Are Passing Over Pale Clouds. (jpg. 3.0) It has a wooden resonance chamber with four strings on one side, and some U-tubes on another side, which requires the player to use one hand to play the strings and another hand to hit the U-tubes. This sculpture can make two tones at the same time.
The detail of he Stars Are Passing Over Pale Clouds
The draft
jpg.3.0 The Stars Are Passing Over Pale Clouds, 2019
Plywood, poplar, ceramics, strings, tuners, L: 112 * W: 65 * H: 128 cm / 44 * 26 * 50 in.
SEE THE DEMO OF THIS PIECE
jpg. 4.0. The Wind is Swaying the Lake, 2019
Pine wood, ceramics, guitar strings, L: 41 * W: 38 * H: 88 cm / 16 * 15 * 35 in.
The draft
The fourth sculpture is named The Wind is Swaying the Lake. (jpg. 4.0.) The main body is a cube frame with twelve strings crossing its top. The player can use the bar on the right side to rotate the gear, plays the strings, shakes the knots, or just lets the gear turn. The small pieces on either side have the same function as the bridge of string instruments, and they also allow the player to adjust the pitch. If the player moves the wood piece further, the pitch turns higher.
SEE THE DEMO OF THIS PIECE
The fifth sculpture is named The Stones Are Growing Along the Riverbank. (jpg. 5.0.) The player can use one hand to rub the bars on the right and may also knock the body of the sculpture at the same time. The shape of this sculpture imitates the resonator of instruments.
The draft
jpg. 5.0. The Stones Are Growing Along the Riverbank, 2019
Pine wood, ceramics, L: 70 * W: 100 * H: 17 cm / 28 * 39 * 7 in.
SEE THE DEMO OF THIS PIECE
ROLL DOWN TO SEE THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND CELLO
Work in process
There is one concept consistently throughout my art, and I named it “Aesthetic Synesthesia.” Synesthesia originally means a neurally-based state of perception. It indicates a sensory stimulus or cognitive pathway spontaneously that causes another perception. In literature, synesthesia is usually a rhetorical method referring to symbolize an abstract description visually. In music, synesthesia is the connection between melody and atmosphere that it triggers. I think these sorts of synesthesia are also equally applicable in art. I use the word “Aesthetic Synesthesia” to indicate that my art was born at instinct, is growing in the intermingled disciplines, and can be described in another two abstract languages: poetry and music.
Poetic and melodic, these two words that seem to describe literature and music sum up my background in these disciplines. Besides being an artist, I am fond of reading and writing, especially poetry. Whether it is an epic of ancient Greece or a sonnet of the Renaissance, a classic Chinese rhyme or a Japanese haiku, they shape my initial appreciation of literature and art. The reason why I prefer poetry to other literary forms is that poetry is an ideal state between narrative and non-narrative. In addition to recording occurrences and delineating scenery, it also has the potential to exaggerate and attenuate, within which can create a novel parallel prospect beyond physical reality. Poetry is like art, an expression that is filled with similes and metaphors. Both of them convey information through imagery. For poets, the imagery is a group of specific vocabulary; for artists, the imagery is a symbol, shape, or pattern. I often write poems for my artwork and even consider my work to be truly complete only after I have a poem for it. “Textualizing” my art allows me the opportunity as a poet to reinterpret the work, which enriches the content. My art and poems complement each other.
Music has also been indispensable to my art — the experience of playing cello since seven-years-old was bound to influence my work. I had not noticed the impact until I found that my paintings and sculptures were full of curves, intervals, echoes, and other elements that frequently appear in classical music. I began to consciously imitate the creation of music from form to process—sometimes like a sonata, assembling a combination of andante and allegro; sometimes like an improvisation, leaving the work to change drastically and finally reveal itself. I see the beauty in the structure of classical music and seek the same poise in my artwork. Moreover, given that creation is inseparable from the body movements, then in terms of body language, there are many similarities between holding a bow and wielding a paintbrush. The movements are varied, sometimes tense or slack, other times hastened or discouraged. The work undulates with the direction of the wrist, except that the place where the art emerges has transferred from the strings to the canvas.
To sum up, "Aesthetic Synesthesia" is a universal sense to connect the perception of art, music, and literature, and to implement it in artworks. A leader of the pioneer literature movement in modern China, Wen Yiduo, has a theory of poetry that reflects this concept in some cases. He once proposed the standard of the poetics beauty in three aspects– musical beauty (rhyme and melody), pictorial beauty (image and symbol), and architectural beauty (structure and form). He used interdisciplinary similes to interpret the poetry beauty and suggested the simple explicit association among those three subjects. It is the synesthesia of different disciplines. My graduation project is trying to achieve this synesthesia directly.
* The photos were downloaded from the internet. They were edited and recreated by Wushuang Tong for explaining the contents of her article in a vivid way. The copyright of the original pictures belongs to the original author.
My art attitude is more close to the classical Chinese literati. Music, literature, and art - three skills were always the qualities that the classical Chinese literati, those who were high-born and wanted to be in the upper class, have. During the periods of warfare or political malpractice, some of the ancient Chinese literati retreated from society to create works as an escape from the unsteady present. This tactic consistently refers to the spiritual support for most of the traditional Chinese intellectuals. This culture initially represented a way against bureaucracy, and then gradually developed into the general vitality, especially in art, literature, and music. Elites who declined an official career generally had the ability and qualification to secure a position but preferred to live a simple and art-productive life. This kind of lifestyle progressively became an attitude that not restricted by intellectuals’ places or positions.
It means no matter what situations the literati be, they can always keep their faith, ideal, and being themselves. There is a lot of Chinese literati had held multiple careers in their life, such as writer, painter, musician, politician, commander, etc. The ideal attitude encourages me to be an artist who has the faith to connect different subjects.
Back to my works for thesis, the titles of five musical sculptures and their atmosphere can be combined into a poem:
The drop of the spring is like broken jade，
The sunlight is dancing on ice cracks,
Stars are passing over the pale clouds.
The wind sways a lake,
Stones grow along the river.
There is a legend that the moon has its dwelling somewhere,
Eyes are the moon you can spend the whole life there.
The poem is not only the title congregation for the works but also describing the features of each sculpture. The first five sentences correspond to the process of playing the sculptures and their sounds by using the imagery in nature; the last two sentences emphasize the atmosphere of the whole installation. Therefore, the poem has both the function of explaining the works and the function of presenting emotions, through which complete my art, and makes art and its explanatory text become a self-consistent system.
The whole installation
My creative process can be likened to a composer who is improvising. In form, this series of sculptures has the shape of many instruments, such as cello, guitar, marimba, harp, and chime, etc. In content, rather than think about the structure of the work, I think about in a movement, how the tone and rhythm can be harmonious, or in the concerto, how the orchestra cooperates with the solo? For me, the tone in art is the color; the rhythm is the line; the orchestra is the background; the solo is the main body of the artwork.
The theme of my work is usually a virtual ecosystem that implicates a self-narrative. Whether the work is two-dimensional or three-dimensional, I work toward an outcome that is both structural and compositional. Inspired by nature, I create unreal abstract worlds: the landscapes that no-one walks into, the creatures that only I can touch, the scenes that happen in fairy tales — I need a realm where I can perch alone. These worlds are reflections of my innermost being by which I could confront reality. Elements that are existing but far from daily life, such as prehistoric organisms, fossils, galaxies, are incorporated into my works to set up a unique and isolated “theatre.” These elements also grant poetry and music to play critical roles in my art: they are like scripts and soundtracks, together with the scenery to complete the performance.
Every ecosystem is undoubtedly complex and interactive, and each component cannot be treated separately, just like my pursuit of poetry, music, and art combined. Finally, I made a performance on my sculptures and cello to be as the conversation between these three areas.