Swimming in the Sea of Sound Waves

 It is a project I did in the summer of 2012.

The stage was set in a abandoned school house of the elementary school in Sandiaoling.I spend around two months collecting sound and local stories from this tiny town used to have coal mining business.

I used these sound as an inspiration and source to create an interactive installation in an empty space in this school house. And I invited a professional dancer , whose name is Wanjen Chang, to come before opening day. We spent few days play around it to see how the sound goes with the movement, and arranged this performance in 22nd, September, 2012.

The video above is the documentary of this show, we like it to be seen even if you're not there that day. Hope you enjoy it and you are more than welcomed to share: on facebook, or your opinion of this work. Cheers!

Ming

"PILE UP, AND SWING BACK" sound design and music

My close friend Weng Cho Ray gives birth to this beautiful project as her final presentation in Konstfack.
I help her complete this sound track as part of her exhibition.
In the process of making this,
I searched few foreigners who lives in Taipei, and asked them to read Choray's words.
The whole experience is beautiful, because those words became alive through their voices.
In the end, I suddenly realize the distance between individuals is not that far.

We could understand strangers deeply.

hope you enjoy this soundtrack, beautiful human beings

Love, Ming

check Cho Ray's work on http://oowcr.com/

[Relation]

Relation is a modern dance play, it is about how individuals interact with others and the process of building relations. Pretty interesting concept and brave intention trying to tell this story in nonverbal language. This is what I have been working on lately.

Composing music for Relation is a whole new experience to me, cause dancers aren't like short films, which I have more experience to compose music for. Dancers aren't fixed, they breathe and glow according to their body and mental state. So my assignment is to create the right atmosphere for them to live/dance, and they will breathe out the emotions which touches the audience. Instead of acting like the boundaries which limits dances, my music is supporting the structure of the whole dance play and remain space/flexibility for it. Love the process of creating this work with the Taiwanese choreographer-Feng Xi Yen and dancers in Feng Dance, creative energy flows back and forth every time we rehearse.

Look forward to see the show, if you are in Taiwan, come to see us!
If not, check the trailer below at least, and give me some feedback.

Love, Ming

Mochen 004

 

This afternoon, plenty of thoughts and emotions filled my mind and brain, couldn't breath or focus.
So I picked up a piece of paper, which I spilled some tea accidentally last week and started to draw.
As soon as I enter that status, the world seems only exist at the tiny tiny spot where my pen and paper touch,
the time is frozen, my heart turning calm during the process. Peaceful experience.

Drawing makes me happy. That moment seems nothing matters, anymore.

[Farewell Welfare] Poster Design

 

Part of [dis-place/thiscollection] series event, the event is about the UK government turned into a money making machine, and keep taking people's welfare. What can be done? is the key question of this event. come to the event to watch Cathy McCormack's documentary "At the Sharp End of the Knife" and start your writing with Hillhead Library Writing Group.

see more details: here

During the discussion with the coordinator, I come up this visualization of concept. Any feedback is welcome!

[Silenced Voices]

Did this mural in the dis-place/thiscollection exhibition, my first time to draw something on the wall (except some of my childhood secret works.) Had lots of fun to draw simultaneously in a bigger scale, and met amazing artists, Laura, Helen, Rothio, A.P. and Schendo, and Zorras. Grateful to have this chance to do this work with thiscollection, the only problem is that it's highly addictive, now I want to create more stuff!!! Ahhh~

www.flickr.com Ming Tse Chen Slienced Voices photoset

Real human interaction

Sometimes you met some people who will give you the faith that there's still genuine connection between human beings, Laura and Helen are these kind of person, open-minded, sensitive, and warm. We drew this in a bar together when saying goodbye for now. Really had a good time and happy to be alive.

Wanna see more of their work?

Laura
Helen

Let's celebrate!

[dis-place/ this collection] poster design

It's a art event begins from the end of April in Glue Factory, Glasgow. Good learning progress from this cooperation, it is my official debut of a poster design. Hope it's helpful to promote the event effectively. Btw, amazing Blochestra, Zorras, A.P and Swendo are performing in the opening night, adapting Scottish poems into their music, feel free to come!!

see more details,
thiscollection
Glasgow Open School
Zorras
Blochestra

Again, all constructive feedback are welcomed!!

Whistle/ Drawing/ Glitch

From the moment I chose to investigate and explore more in the sound field, I found my true passion toward understanding the the relationship of sound and visual.And [Whistle/Drawing/Glitch] is part of it. I build this algorithm in MaxMSP, there are two main mechanism. First, detecting the pitch of my whistle and generating arpeggio to comping it; second, grabbing the data of the mouse position and feeding them back to change different parameters to create glitchy sound. By these two main approach, I successfully integrated whistle and drawing into my new instrument!!

Please give me constructive feedback, they will help me to improve and give you better work next time.
Thank you!!

about Human

Mochen 003. 15/02/20


The more people I know, the less I understand people.
The more women I fall in love with, the less I know about love
I don't know anyone, anything, anymore.

mochen 002

...was listening to Heartbeats by the Knife repeatedly for an hour on the train, 

this is the by-product. Tell me what you see, curious x

Mochen 001

Hello, it's my drawing on my sketch book. It doesn't have a title, but I don't like works named "untitled," 
therefore, I would call this Mochen 001, as a start of a series of drawing.
And the reason I chose this word is simply because I love it!


[Mochen] Seeming simple but truely complex


hope you all enjoy it, and please give me some feedback on comments.
Cheers, will upload something new soon!

about sleepless

Recently, after a week of chaotic sleeping schedule due to my flu, I start to lose track of time. wakes up after sunset, fall asleep before sunrise. And I don't like this life...


Last night, I tried lying on bed for an hour, get up, ate a bit, tried to go back to sleep, failed, started to replace my guitar with new strings, crazy long night...and the flow of time is so surreal. Totally alone, because the city is also sleeping. And I listen to Keith Jarrret's "The Melody At Night With You" (good album, strongly recommend )over and over and try to slow down my mind, spinning spinning brain aimlessly searching for answers... Today, I had a long day and went to swing during the night. Fog came back after sunset, make the full moon so dreamy, and cars breathes out beautiful ashes, the night is the stage, my tiredness is the director, turn things into magical form. Love the world under water, the light, the bubble, the floating of human, resisting gravity and become the most astonishing picture.


Now, I feel tired extremely... hope I will wake up tomorrow and get my sleeping schedule fixed.
Good night, and good luck.

Tiny addictions in daily life

Just watched the movie about Facebook yesterday, and have been frequently checking Facebook everyday since I joined two years ago. And I start today's post with repeating Facebook 3 times in two sentences, how sympathetic is that? Instead of praising David Fincher's new film, I start to retrospect my addictions in my life so far. Why they are so dominant? What influence caused by them?

Overwhelming information comes after the development of media,such as TV,internet. It results in that people of my generation grew up and now living in a environment filled with stimuli. This environment deconstructs the hierarchy of knowledge by making information more transparent, but it also brings temptation and distraction. My friend Sylvain used to describe himself as a cat,which is most easily distracted creature in this planet, when he sits all day staring computer screen browsing websites without doing any productive activities. Thanks to the development of social medias.This situation is getting more serious and normal in daily life. Take myself as an example, whenever I sleep in, feel guilty, and depressed, I would spend whole day reading through all the status update of my friends, and jumping back and forth between my email and messengers. I wouldn't say it's totally waste of time, because I did have quite a lot good conversation with friends through messengers, but most of the time, it's just another perfect excuse to escape from the reality. So constantly checking email and social medias becomes one of the tiny addictions in my life, tiny but dominant. Tried once to deactivate my facebook account, but it didn't last long before I start again. Fortunately, I start to use it in another way, more using it than controlled by it.

Another strong addiction is not digital at all, it's the strong dependency on tea. This habit started from I moved to Glasgow one year ago. The first impression is my friends in UK always ask me "Do you want some tea?" when they want to chat or hang out. The next thing discovery is that I fall in love with the taste of earl grey, and it becomes an irreversible process of being obsessed by tea. I almost forgot the taste of water until one day I realize the color of my tooth are changing into brown rapidly because of tea. Therefore, I try to reduce the amount I drink in one day recently, hope to reach the balance again soon.

The final addiction worth mentioning is TV series. This is the ultimate monster which rules my daily life. From Japanese Tv series to recent True blood, Hellcats, Hung, and Doctor Who. These bad boys have one thing in common, they all set up perfect hooks in the last 5 minutes of each episode. And it's almost unbearable that I have to wait for another week to know what's going to happen. But the worst situation just happened when watching Doctor Who, because I never watched it until last week, and it has so many episodes since 2005. So I basically spend 2 days finish the 1st season without doing anything else last week, Luckily, I stopped. Only because I noticed that this habit generates an useless emotion in my new life, and it's literally eating me, cannot afford that.


I guess everyone has different addictions in their lives, and also different ways of dealing them. In my opinion, addictions are part of my life, it's not necessary to kick them out absolutely, but do what I have to do first, then, enjoy some relaxing moment among addictions. It might be a better way for me to deal with them.

lost in translation

Still remember attending a documentary screening last year arranged by birds eye view. In Q and A section,the female Chinese director addressed her career as a writer in UK. She started to write her debut novel with her broken English, and it turned out to be one of the best seller which is supporting her film making career financially.

I've never read her novel, and I don't remember her name anymore. But to me, it's the best example of the fascination of different language systems. Mandarin is my mother tongue, in which I can express myself clearly and efficiently. As a vehicle of though,it is the most dominant one which help me to make important decisions in my life. As to English, I started to learn when I was 10, but it's totally different story, the translation mechanism always takes important part. In most conditions, I start with a thought in Mandarin, and translate it into English, then finally speak out or write down in English.

However, things have changed a lot since I moved to UK and studied my master degree. Communications in English are so frequent and instant. This situation gave me hard time in the beginning, it was more like a elementary student, me of course, trying so hard with limited vocabulary to speak to university students. And I turned this frustration into a short film-"Language Solitude." (see above) After bearing with this status for one year, I feel more natural and easy to talk or write in English. It seems that translation from Chinese is not as dominant as before,that is to say, there's a English Logic in my mind now, how amazing is that! Therefore, I create this blog. With constant writing, hopefully it would help the "English me"grow , really look forward to see where it would take me and how my personally developed through learning language.

To whom might be reading, feel free to give me comments and also correction of my broken English. Cheers.

first time

is always hard and exciting!