Vivian Wang worked with Balinese composer Dewa Ketut Alit, artist collective U5, and architects Li Tavor, Alessandro Bosshard, and Matthew van der Ploeg, to explore the homologies of landscape, time, and music. Spearheaded by art historian Adam Jasper at ETH Zürich, a transdisciplinary team from Indonesia, Singapore, and Switzerland collectively investigate the story of the subak – the complex irrigation system of Bali that has, thanks to the close cooperation of farmers and priests, held the island in a balance for a thousand years. The project recounts how the hydraulic and cultural landscape of the subak became one of the first sites of resistance to the so-called Green Revolution.
The final exhibition comprised of several key components, one of which is a film/fiction documentary called Double Bind.
Double Bind Film, 2019
25’, HD
Directed and produced by U5
Music, sound design and narration by Vivian Wang
A journey is a confrontation of expectation with reality. How will the places we visit compare to the images we have formed in our head? Few islands are as evocative as Bali, the famous island in the Indonesian archipelago that was often described as the last paradise. Double Bind documents a trip to Bali as well as the possibility and impossibility of finding an approach to the complex reality of a place. The film was inspired by the research of the American anthropologist Stephen Lansing, whose work was crucial for a reevaluation - and survival - of the century-old tradition of rice growing on Bali in face of attempts to implement the international Green Revolution on the island in the 1980s. But Double Bind is not only a study of agriculture, religion, and water. Bali has fascinated artists and anthropologists since the early of the 20th century. Later, surprising connections between the Indonesian island and California on the other side of the globe and the development cybernetics have developed, connections that already began in the 1930s when the anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson studied the structure of Balinese society.
Double Bind tells the story of encounters - and missed encounters - of anthropology and art, of Bali and California, a tale of projections and connections.
Sound Installation
Online
6’50”
Bags of rice, aluminium sheet, 2 large speaker, MaxMSP
Thousands of rice grains gather together in the hopes of figuring out how to respond to agitation caused by sound. Responding to changing frequencies, the rice grains move and dance in and out of diverse formations. The fun for the spectator lies in watching the different ways synchronous movement is expressed.
8 channel composition commissioned by Ekko Festival Bergen 2021. Also featured at Sibelius Academy Finland and finally presented at ZHdK in 8.4 multichannel format at the Kammermusiksaal 2.
Ekko Festival Bergen, Norway
October 2021
Curator: Lasse Marhaug
Sibelius Academy, Helsinki (as part of Spatial Audio Week 2021)
December 2021
Curator: Jan Schacher
ZHdK, Kammermusiksaal 2
January 2022
Master Project
31"
Synopsis:
An octophonic work exploring breath and the human voice, deconstructed and organised in multimodes, seeking out unventured terroir and sans language, to sound out the unheard, the suppressed, the invisible, the undeveloped, the inner and the other. Eight speakers become embodiments of the alt human. In the deep murky recesses of my clumsy subconscious sprung forth this idea of a better, more improved model human. In this last year, having spent so much time physically alone, and encountering human interaction through zoom or phone conversation only, I came to rely a lot on the voices of people as a gauge for intimacy, or humanity, if you will, a way to measure or tell from hearing vocal articulation, how well I was actually connecting. I started to observe more closely the infinite minute details of voices, and this led to the possibility of redesigning a new sonic experience of human "anima", our vital force. Alchemy dabbling. The human voice can be strong but also vulnerable, incredibly multi-faceted, and a carrier of so much nuance. Another reason why I am curious about this notion of intimacy, is if by working with these voices, there'd still be a way to feel and respond instinctively to the outcome. I also wanted to step back from being a composer, so in using Max to engineer a garden of vocal “happenings”, I relinquish some artistic control and what is heard is a result of autonomous and accidental unfolding events.