Following our last post, collaborator thruoutin kindly gave us a deeper insight into the atmospheric visual/music project that he has been working on alongside Chai Mi (柴觅).
Talking about how the project came about, thruoutin describes the process of navigating between two mediums, and the challenges that came with having access to limited resources:
“We began working on the project in 2013 and did a few practices at my studio with my studio monitors and a busted office projector. It was a new concept for both of us because we were both communicating what kind of ideas we wanted on two mediums that each of us respectively hadn’t collaborated with in the past.
I arranged a session of about four to five different musical movements that would be improvised along with her animation. The timing of each varied slightly each time so the audience got a different experience at each showing. Nothing was linked through tempo or MIDI so it made for some rather interesting results. “
The duo initially premiered the show in Beijing, following on with appearances in Hangzhou and Shanghai. They plan to perform in Xi’an in October. Further collaborations can be found on Chai Mi’s website.
Commenting on the point we raised in relation to our experiences at a similar performance by Lee Ranaldo and Leah Singer in March, thruoutin argued that in actual fact the intensity of the show makes it difficult for audiences to switch off:
“The initial Beijing shows were with our friends at small music venues like Jianghu and XP, but what was really fascinating was when we brought the show to animation festivals and art spaces. The people there watched the performance, but stuck around to ask questions and sometimes even exchanged contacts and became friends. At the Zhejiang National Art Museum we did a workshop at the end and taught some students and adults how to do their own stop motion. There were even some younger kids who wanted to figure out how the sequencing worked with my music software.”
Providing workshops and giving an inside into how creative projects come about is a great way to add value and truly engage audiences. As an increasing number of international artists continue to flood the market, we may well see more local acts getting creative with the format of their shows as a means of cutting through the noise.
Let us know if you get to check out their future shows!