three images of laughter

three images of laughter from Yan Da on Vimeo.
This is a digital performance based on music from Qigang Chen's San Xiao (三笑）
Three performers try to embody a musical, visual and physical interpretation to the same piece of music in three different ways: playing a double cello, painting on a plexiglass and conducting with body movement. These improvisational gestures would further affect each other performer’s digital double—their images being live captured as separate videos, which are then projected as an integrated scene onto a screen facing the performers and the audience.
In the screen world, there are three frames declaring each performer’s territory. Their gestures will reveal and change their own and each other’s visual appearance on the screen. They can easily across borders whether in the virtual screen or in the physical space.
As the progress goes on, they continue this interference by switching each other’s performance in the physical space, they also invite the audience to enter their physical and virtual territory. This interference also triggers the music and virtual visual world into chaos. During the finale, everything is back to the original.
Each performer has his or her own product as the result: a painting, a double cello impromptu and a digital performance system designed by the third performer, the “conductor” that is me using Max/msp/jitter.
San Xiao is a contemporary musical composition for 4 traditional Chinese instruments, written by Qigang Chen. The name and the context of the music could be translated as three images of laughter, which has different references in Chinese historical context. One of them referred images of laughter as different attitudes or gestures embodied in their understanding of life. The other reference is a typical theme in Chinese painting about three friends having a joyful conversation in deep mountains. Here I’m not trying to directly translate the context of the music, but to explore the topic of interaction, dialogue and digital double through the performance and digital system design.