Portfolio Week 5 – Follow Up

The lecture focused on the proposal for the next two projects later in the unit. We looked at framing our intentions and ideas with words and zooming in on the key elements and enquiries we are working with and making through.

My project Swan Song is a narrative based opera piece, which will be a broadcast on Resonance Extra after my residency in their studio. There are a few different angles of looking at this project: firstly, it is about Hong Kong during the handover period, our identity, our values and our future; secondly it is about music, how do I, incorporating my style of vocal music with folk song elements, create a blueprint of future in my practise? And thirdly, it is about my trying to be resourceful, to utilise the space I am given, an ex-Mormon church, and within two weeks, create a piece regardless of the outcome, in the form of a radio broadcast.

I am enquiring the past of my heritage, and a way to present the past, as well as an imaginary future. This entails a research into the year 1986 where my piece is set, and a lot of practical research into way I can present the topic with grace and without condemning the past and all the decisions people made. These has been documented in my previous blogposts.

With the residency coming in a week, I am recording materials with my synth Lyra-8 to imagine a futuristic Hong Kong in the lens of 1986. It is something that I think would set the tone of he piece before I go into the studio to focus on recording the space and other sound objects and it is also something that I can do at home. I have been doing really long improvisations with it to create assets I can then edit and cut for future use. It is like chopping up onions in preparation of a meal. It is also like taking the flavour of an ingredient without taking its form and structure, to take it in its molecular form, to create something else in the future. Here are some examples of the edits I am making.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zEMRYRfmZ8Dejas3zi1NP8sg8JHxe20_?usp=share_link

These sessions are so very helpful to get myself to actually make something and do research for the project. It could be very limiting in a creative project to just read about it and look at other things people have done. But actually to consolidate thoughts and the informations gathered into something physical is far more important.

One book that I borrowed from the lecture’s exercise is a photo book by Rinko Kawauchi called The Eyes, the Ears.

I purposefully didn’t borrow something immediately relevant to sound or my project. I think that kind of research could be reductive and limiting my creativity. So I went to the photography section of the library which is actually right next to sound, in search of something that will catch my eyes.

I went through lots of portraits at first, something that I really enjoy personally. But then I encountered this book. Which I already know of but never seen it in life. I used to study photography and this picture on the cover of the book was a big influence and inspiration in my photography work. I suddenly remembered Hong Kong through my camera lens when I was younger. The curiosity I took on tiny, everyday objects. ‘Decisive Moments’, I remember learning about that and realising how important it is of our perspective we take on life, as it affects everything in our being, not just photography.

My days in Hong Kong are precious. I was mostly depressed but that doesn’t mean I don’t cherish every single thing about this place I love. And that is why I am doing the project. My heritage isn’t just a heritage, I grew up there and lived there until very recently. It is not something I have to find inside me, it is so integrally me. I am not a second generation immigrate who can’t speak the language and only know the traditions from their family. I am not even an immigrate, nor a person who grew up to western culture in Hong Kong, ignorant to their surroundings. That creates a special dynamic between my work and my heritage that most people will not understand. one that I don’t know how to explain through words. And this particular element is something I picked up on in this picture. My heritage is not a genre nor a style. It is subtleties that cannot be replicated. It is the nuance you could see but cannot describe. Especially in an institution like UAL we over analysis every creative decision. This means this and that means that. But it doesn’t work so simply, while of course everything comes from somewhere, they are not always apparent, they might have a history that ages back to when I was a child, and was then polished by ten different things I experienced later that evolved into that one decision. So when it comes to explaining my heritage through my work, I have to trust that it is inside me already, and I should just do it the way I feel comfortable in, because it will be right.

The next blogpost will be about testing and experimenting with radio broadcast as a form.