Ying Xu

"Symphony" , originated from the Geek word Symphonia, represents the combination of sounds. Symphony not only has sophisticated, systematic form and structure system, but also has delicate connotation and perception. Symphony directly expresses the form of the work as well as implies the collision and fusion between people and objects, nature and machinery.

Diverse raw materials like bamboo, stone, glass, metal, paper, etc. are collided to produce sound through the command of the physical devices. They are man-made machines, similar in forms but not unvarying, all doing orderly and repetitive movements driven by motors and emitting rhythmic sounds, however, when they are placed in the natural environment, it is as if nature has given them life. Along with the addition of wind, rain, sunlight  and other natural factors, a great deal of randomness and uncertainty was produced, and the viewers percept space, sound and vision. Viewers’ participation is a necessity of this work, and one viewer acts as a conductor to randomly start or stop the installation, giving the work a symphonic effect and feeling the random collision and interplay among sound, artificiality, articles and the nature.

The combination of natural organic ceramic forms like animal bones and fossils, with industrial products like metal sheets and bicycle wheels. With human rotation and wind acting together to let them collided each other and make a beautiful sound.

"Invitation of the woods performers" is inspired by the environment spaces and characteristics of slopes, woods, and winds. They remind people of the brisk sounds of wind chimes and the melodies of guitars. This is a place with little noise pollution of the cities. I chose human-blown glass, steel ropes, and springs of various sizes to complete the creation in this particular environment.

I created natural sounds with materials, blended these media into the natural environment, and explored the merging of sounds with the surrounding space. To create various atmospheres and dig into the multi-dimensional relationships between installations, sounds, spaces, and people according to different settings is the core of this project. 

"Quadraphonic" is a technical term for the four directions in which soundwaves travel: front left and front right, back left and back right, with the listener located in the middle. Clear acrylic panels on either side of the installation support glass rods. Sheets of foil of varying sizes and bent into random shapes resembling water ripples are carefully suspended in rows from the clear glass rods. This creates a square formation both locally and as a whole (front left and front right, back left and back right), allowing for collision or friction in any direction at one point or another. On the open meadow by the river, the wind creates sound by colliding either lightly or heavily against the“waters”.

Solid steel bars are bent into random shapes to become the internal supporting frame. The reddish-brown leather is randomly, but tightly stretched over the frame, revealing part of the inner frame. When it is positioned on the tree branch in a natural environment, the wind causes the branch to make a sound by beating against the taut leather. (The interior is displayed on the wall with branches as slapping objects manipulated by people to bounce on the leather).

I realized a unified dilemma facing modern young girls. The conflict within the family primarily comes from disciplining the dressing style of children to fit the image of "well-behaved girls". Such conflict is deeply rooted in the social consensus of "judging women by their appearances." Parents are obliged to ask girls to dress and behave conservatively to protect them from latent harm or insult, further disguising the deeply rooted rule of treating women in this society.

Therefore, I applied the concept of "covering up" to the clothing design. I made a very tight-covering yet weird-looking dress to cover up the body ostensibly. Behind the dress, however, I actually concealed the inherent idea of the society's "materialization of women", which equates the behaviors like wearing a revealing outfit, dressing up for self-expression, smoking or drinking with sexual and seductive concepts, judging "good girls" from a hypocritical moral high ground.

I recorded me myself wearing the shell clothes to "disguise" the "bad girl" in me when I went out on the streets with my parents or visited my uncle's house, capturing people's reactions. I told my parents that I was experimenting with some odd and random behaviors and let them choose either the shell dress or a sun-top for me to wear and go outside with them. They chose the former and gave me a serious lecture on my wrongdoing. Before we set off, I went for two walks outside with the two sets of outfits through the busy streets and found many people staring at me. When I was in the sun-top, their focus was more on the exposed parts of my body, and when I wore the shell dress, they were more curious about the design.

I chose some natural shells picked up from the beach and scallop shells from a seafood market as the front part of the clothes the same way some primitive tribes of humans shielding their bodies. Shell is a symbol of gestation, protection, and feminization. Several regulations on women's behaviors were also written explicitly on the back of the clothes.