🚗 Project in Progress

Art labor radio show?

A old project, a new expression

Initially, I wanted to reveal the absurdity of my previous working environment and commemorate the precious friendships and solid support that helped us through the hard work. Although I wrote only one chapter of this story, the story shows how the separation between reality and the ideal world leads to painful feelings. After the third broadcast show, I realized I also wanted to critique the absurdity of today's system, where people are expected to maintain constant production without experiencing genuine life. I want to change my script to a radio show.

Sad Memory

I worked in an art institute four years ago, and I view those memories as a field research experience. I wrote a script about an artist's assistant based on my friends' and my own experiences. I merged various characters of my friends and 'art laborers,' trying to depict their mental state during rushed jobs. There exists a hierarchy in the Chinese art industry - the great outcomes always belong to star curators, artists, and directors, who consider this normal. However, what about the workers behind the scenes? Who are they? What are they doing?

The pandemic magnified all these existing problems in the art industry. During my time working there, we faced strict lockdown policies between 2020 and 2022. We could not leave our apartments and had to take Covid-19 Nucleic Acid PCR tests three times a day during the hardest period. We needed to maintain the art fair through their agenda, because one of our clients was the government and big companies. So many things changed in a day, sometimes because of policy, sometimes because the big boss felt unsatisfied. We had to work from home and modify the changes. We were tired of this situation.

Explosive Fuse

University students and young professionals across different industries shared the same feeling of being trapped in an absurd system. All the exhaustion and frustration exploded due to a accdent. This collective emotion led many young people to protest in what became known as the 'A4 Revolution'. Despite the government having the authority to control this situation and prevent such gatherings from happening again, people continued to meet. According to an 'official internal document' shared by my friend, the protesters were not only students but also many people from the cultural industry. They organized small gatherings to discuss through literature how absurd these policies were. After the A4 Revolution, the government sought to exercise more control over ideological matters, wanting obedient citizens rather than liberal thoughts. However, people wanted to express their desire for freedom through artistic expression. They found themselves living in a situation without liberty, feeling trapped in a prison built by 'the one and only correct thought'.

Ash

The reality is that no more protests have happened in China since then, and the art industry has become increasingly lifeless. Publishing has become more restricted, bookstores and art book fairs were forced to close due to various reasons, while avoiding any mention of the forbidden events. There are still some brave activists who express their politics under censorship and threats from the government. More and more young people have to make a decision: choose to stay silent or go abroad. The A4 paper was blown away and burned to ashes, fading in the wind.

Through this fictional story, I want to create an alternative ending, while also preserving and archiving these memories in a different way. It might be ash, but it could still nourish the land of imagination.

Story to Script, Script to Sound

I already adapted the story into an actable script, initially planning to make a short film. However, filmmaking would require high costs in equipment, actors, scenes, and staff. Micheal shared the laurence rassel show during the autum vacation, it inspired me to change it to a radio show format. It is more flexible and allowed me to experiment with various sound performances under ideal conditions. This format also allows me to complement my whole project with my article(Ghost Labor, Do AI dreams of Art labor?(part1)Do AI dreams of Art labor?(part2)The show must go on?

About the script and radio project - When I asked Zuihui if she would like to join this project, she suggested taking it further and documenting all the work on a wiki page (which is what you're reading now). The core idea could be using sound to reveal the absurdity within contemporary work systems.

About the story itself, I asked Zhouzhou about the script. She advised that I need to work more on completing the story first, saying it could be adapted to any format once I have a complete narrative.

But I want to work on it as soon as possible, because I promised Zuihui I would make a demo. Apparently, I'm not proficient enough to finish it on my own yet. I turned to Wang for guidance on using Ableton Live 12 for music composition.

All the problems will be solved by sound design processes(maybe not)

Sound Design Analysis

Primarily using electronic sound effects and experimental music elements to create an atmosphere where dreams and reality intertwine. Voice Processing: Using different sound effects for different characters to reflect their symbolic meaning in the plot Musical Elements: Using "半斤八两" + "Burning Down the House" as foundation, interpreted through electronic music variations Environmental Sound: Interweaving real office sounds with surreal sound design Spatial Audio: Using multi-channel mixing to create an immersive audio experience The audience should be able to experience the protagonist's mental state and emotional changes through sound. Need to pay attention to mixing layers and progressive sound processing, and how to express the protagonist's state of drifting between reality and dreams through sound.

Scene-by-Scene Duration Analysis:

Opening Sequence (about 3 minutes)

Environmental sound establishment (30 seconds)

"半斤八两" electronic music variation (trying dubstep genre mixed with crowd sounds) (1 minute)

Digital display sound effects layered with text reading (1-2 minutes)

Dream Gallery Scene (about 4-5 minutes)

Spatial atmosphere establishment (1 minute)

Dream Gallery —> Opening space, dance, speech, near-far feeling, (echo)

Dance crowd sounds and music (2 minutes)

Transition to forum scene (1-2 minutes)

Forum Scene (about 5-6 minutes)

Host and guest dialogue (2-3 minutes)

Sound processing and environmental effects (2 minutes)

Emotional gradual change process (1 minute)

Reality and Dream Interweaving (about 30-45 seconds): Voice variation + environmental sounds

Office environmental sounds (2 minutes): Renovation sounds

Conflict scene and sound overlay (5 minutes)

Emotional outbreak segment (2-3 minutes)

Night Ending Scene (about 5-6 minutes)

Convenience store scene (2-3 minutes)

Final music and dance scene (2-3 minutes)

Total Estimated Duration: 20-25 minutes

Sound Material References

Possession — Opętanie 1-6 Psychological changes in daily situations/light->eerie/electronic piano+shaker+marimba/different playing styles of same melody/delay+slow down+change instruments+increase frequency of certain sounds

Millennium Mambo — A Pure Person Intro heavy+nostalgic memory feeling/voice modulation+slicing+saxophone large reverb+release/saxophone+percussion pad+bass

Album Percussion with Clock Sense of time urgency/fast rhythm+clock hand sounds (electronic clock? physical clock) slicing+percussion pad+page turning sounds+keyboard+pressing ballpoint pen sounds+crisp sounds

Arrangement References: 骊歌 — Penglai Mt.: 白鸽 + Three Little Birds/backbeat rhythm+reggae (Expressionism) Schoenberg expresses anxiety (Pointillism) Webern expresses rational disorder and dissociation, but still within framework

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1of53bLgPK4gwScjlrONNW

Sound Board Pratice

13/11-17/11 I tried to record the dialogue with TTS, I was unsatisfied with the outcome, it lacked of emotional frustration. If I want to make it more drama, I should record it by my own, and use voice changer to distinguish charactor in the script.

Progress Rate

Dialogue：30%

Soundscape：10%

BGM：0%

World wide web in your face!

How's your life

I have always wanted to create a website to archive my previous works and documentaries. In my previous job, I worked on editing HTML/CSS/JavaScript-based visual content for promotion rather than coding, so I rarely had the chance to work with code prototypes. I was always driven by projects and needed to find motivation to do these things for myself - that's when HTML Club inspired me! We practiced various design formats with Manetta. She suggested we find references and study their code to replicate them. I began learning coding formats through practice. I came across a simple personal portfolio website that used dot patterns and coordinates, which I found really interesting, and I tried to combine the concept of '面相图' (face reading) with my work.

I want a good fortune

Chinese parents always want their children to have a good life, so they consult fortune-telling - every mark on our faces has a specific meaning. If a person has no marks on their face, it's called "面无善痣为贵" (a face without moles is lucky and rare). Most people have marks, so we have to interpret it as "面无恶痣" (a face without bad-meaning moles), and when we were young, our parents would often take us to have them removed, believing it would bring good fortune.

My father studied Feng Shui and calculated my destiny, saying that I would be working until I die and must keep working to achieve a better life. I always want to change this explanation because I think it was negative and traditional; it did not fit the times. This made me contemplate the theme of 'labor'. I combined my personality with my previous works, hoping to give them meaning.

View my wholelife through my marks on the face

How to tell your life

I could create a face-reading interactive installation, combining every mark and mole on the face to compose a song. This reminds me of gleemen, who would sing about people's lives during their journeys. I want to create an interactive installation based on this idea: when a person approaches, a camera scans their face and composes a song based on the interpretation of their facial marks. I think "sing your life as your own tone" is more positive than "calculate your fortune".

Every mark in your face is like a music notation

In Chinese legends, fortune-telling is said to shorten one's life because destiny belongs to '天机(mystery known only to heaven)'. It's believed that blind people are suited for fortune-telling because they traded their sight for the ability to read life, death, fortune, and misfortune - both past and future. However, blind people could not participate in society due to visual impairment, so they developed unique ways of communication with fortune-telling, it being one way to maintain livelihood and participate in public activities.

Moreover, since visually impaired people don't rely on visual information and aren't distracted by sight, they depend on other sensory perceptions and are more sensitive to environmental changes than sighted people. Therefore, I plan to use Braille music notation for the visual presentation of this destiny score, making it an inclusive program that is friendly to visually impaired people.

I intend to use dots to represent facial marks, moles, and even acne. This concept is similar to Braille music notation, where braille cells are used to allow visually impaired musicians to read music. The idea also parallels '工尺谱' (Gongche notation), a traditional Chinese musical notation system that uses Chinese characters to represent musical notes. In ancient China, symbols like '◐ ◯ ◑ ●' were used to play sound and tone with three-string. In Gongche notation, percussion marks are written alongside the notes, and the whole system is written vertically from top to bottom and right to left, with rhythm marks placed to the right of the note characters.

Destiny Score

The position of moles corresponds to pitch, the size of moles corresponds to volume, the left-right arrangement corresponds to time sequence, and shape characteristics correspond to different timbres. The degree of mole protrusion corresponds to Braille music notation, mole shapes correspond to the circular symbols in Gongche notation, using Gongche's vertical reading direction, combining the tactile characteristics of Braille and the timbral expression of the three-string instrument to create a printed musical score. This score represents a calculated destiny.