Hui Hu

David Abram writes in the ‘Spell of the Sensuous: "My skin no longer notices the various changes in the breeze, smells seem to have disappeared from the world altogether, and my nose is awake only once or twice a day, once to cook and once to take out the rubbish. The roar of the engine masks the sound of birdsong and wind, the electric light obscures not only the stars but also the night itself."

Hui tries to reinforce bodily perception by installing the extreme sentience of animals in a numbed body, re-embedding "herself" in the world and reclaiming her gradually blurring self in the perception of the other. For example, inhabiting the cat's highly sensitive hearing and the dog' superb sense of smell.

Hui created Multi-Animals a shaman-like being that wanders the sky, the land and the sea to heal and remind humans of the wilting of their sensory systems, to consciously awaken the living body, to draw sustenance from nature and to heal the physical pain.

Hui collected and recorded animal noises and made beaded chains that corresponded to their sound waves. Wearing the beaded chains she played some simple instruments recording the sounds and rhythms which she then sped up or slowed down to simulate the calls of dogs, cats, eagles and voles. The continuous movements produced by the performance were then used to create patterns.

Hui developed her own colour and dye system through similar processes. Speeding up the audio of the beads rubbing against the drums by 5.0X, until the audio resembled the sound of a dog barking. Then using the speed of the audio to alter and tweak the dye timings and concentrations for her fabrics. She was looking for a similarity between the speed of the sound and the shade of the fabric!