The Waste Land (2024) begins with the story of the "Mountain Spirit" from "Nine Songs," transforming and reconstructing this traditional text within a contemporary context to create a cyborg Mountain Spirit figure that symbolizes fluid identity and gender plurality. The work employs the traditional Chinese literary imagery of "pine wind" as a medium, presenting a spectacle of postmodern spiritual wasteland. By reconstructing time and space on the theatrical stage, "The Waste Land" aims to capture the infinity within the postmodern context and the existential anxiety it implies, using the classical mythological text of the Mountain Spirit to explore the collective human destiny and unconsciousness regarding the past, present, and future, embedded in the theme of waiting.
New Media Experimental Opera
19-21 July 2024
RCA IED Festival, London, UK
Respiratory Sensor/
Wind Sound Programming
Inspired by Chinese mythology, where immortals' breath transforms into earthly winds, this project employs respiratory sensors to capture real-time breathing data from the Mountain Spirit character. Through MAXMSP sound programming, these respiratory data are converted into wind sounds that drift through the mountains, forming an integral part of the production's Symphonic Poem alongside the musical composition.
The concept draws from ancient Chinese texts:
"The God of Mount Zhong, named Zhuyin, creates day with his eyes open and night with his eyes closed. His exhalation brings summer, his inhalation brings winter. He neither drinks nor eats nor rests, and his breath becomes the wind."
"In heaven, the divine manifests as wind."
Every whisper of wind echoing through the valley corresponds to each breath of the Mountain Spirit. The wind and sea sounds for which he waits represent a response - a resonance from the one he longs for. The programming creates a dynamic interaction between the performer's breathing patterns and the environmental soundscape, establishing a metaphysical dialogue between the corporeal and natural worlds.
This technical implementation bridges traditional mythology with contemporary digital sound design, creating an immersive
audio experience that embodies the ancient Chinese philosophical concept of the interconnectedness between divine breath and natural phenomena.
Visual Interaction
The digital visual design primarily incorporates key symbolic elements: pine trees, lightning, rain, altars, and Bodhisattva imagery. These visual components interact synchronously with both the soundscape and the Mountain Spirit's respiratory patterns, creating an integrated immersive theatrical experience.
The interactive system establishes a triadic relationship between:
1. Respiratory data input (captured from the performer)
2. Generated soundscape (wind sounds and musical composition)
3. Responsive visual projections
Musical Composition and
Sound Narrative Design
In developing the sonic landscape, this project incorporates traditional East Asian instruments including shakuhachi, xiao, morin khuur (horse-head fiddle), shamanic drums, and Chinese ceremonial drums. The sound design process involved extensive research into ritual dance music pertinent to the narrative context.
Through collaboration with music arrangers, these traditional sound elements underwent contemporary adaptation, integrating electronic music components while preserving their cultural authenticity.
Installation Design
Deconstructed from the structure of the classical painting "Ten Thousand Gullies Pine Wind," this sculpture reconstructs this traditional painting using contemporary geometric deconstruction and metallic materials. The pine forest floats and echoes across the rocks of this mountain.
Character Design
The Cyborg Mountain Spirit
In the classical text "Nine Songs," the Mountain Spirit is depicted as an entity that transcends traditional categories—neither deity nor specter, neither male nor female, and existing beyond physical form. This figure is characterized by a perpetual entanglement with solitude, echo, and freedom.
This production reimagines the Mountain Spirit through a postmodern lens, creating the "Cyborg Mountain Spirit" as a symbol of hybrid and fluid identity that challenges conventional classifications and hierarchical structures.
The "Cyborg Mountain Spirit" embodies posthuman anxiety and uncertainty, reflecting a psychological state caught between technology and nature, rationality and emotion. This digital, spectral existence serves as a microcosm of the "postmodern wasteland," encapsulating contemporary existential dilemmas.