Gaoyuan Chen

The Wave is a participatory performance work. The project was inspired by my experiences while studying in a junior high school in China with a semi-military management model. Participants receive texts with rule instructions to read out in the live space accompanying my performance, together creating an abstract soundscape of noise.

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I have prepared 20 different texts (including, but not limited to, original novels, advertisements for part-time jobs, editorial articles, song lyrics, political documents, encyclopedia entries, interview dialogues, artistic manifestos). Audience members could choose to take a copy of the text and participate in the performance as readers, or they could choose to just move freely through the space, listening and watching as audience members. The text marks the rules of participation, one's position with instructions for changing the voice of the reading, while I myself will continue to run in place on the treadmill until the alarm goes off.

 

I, as the conductor, established a similar field of sound through the rules of the text, where the audience could hear nothing but noise if they didn't walk in, and their individual voices could only be heard once they were close to a specific person.