Sofy Yuditskaya interviews Cecilia Wu, AKA: Wu Xiao Ci
featured image, video still from a multimedia installation by Cecilia Wu
Cecilia Wu’s piece entitled “Embodied Sonic Meditation: Resonance of the Heart” captures hand gestures and their fluid changes making mudras via leap motion and machine learning, triggering associated musical phrases and gestures as well as video of the Buddhabrot fractal deformations processed by audio filters also triggered by the mudras. I asked her about her process:
Sofy: How do your performances tie into causes and ideas that are important to you personally, feminist visibility in general and your spiritual practice.
Cecilia: As a Tibetan Buddhism practitioner for two decades, my work preserves, promotes, and further explores ancient Tibetan arts and its contemplative treasures, with emerging media art technologies and computer music. Deeply anchored in Tibetan culture, my research situates the practice of designing DMI for performing arts to create social impact. By exploring the powerful force of the human voice, I focus on how vocalists can enhance their vocal expressions with state-of-the-art technology that facilitates cross-cultural communication. I invite new ways of using sensor and motor coupling through auditory feedback to create novel artistic expressions and to increase people’s sonic awareness. I call my work “Embodied Sonic Meditation.”
To date, less than 5% of audio engineers are women. It is crucial to make our voices heard by actively presenting our work that is meaningful to our community as a whole. My recent work brings attention to the importance of women’s prenatal and mental care, as well as the support and assistance needed by survivors of baby loss and their families. I would like to explore more in my future work about women’s wellness, women’s studies, and feminism.
https://wuxiaoci.bandcamp.com/album/clean-your-heart
Humanity, the first album of the album series Clean Your Heart, published by Taihe Rye Music, Beijing, which led to the success of winning “The Most Breathtaking Album of The Year”, awarded by SINA.com. The inspiration of the theme – Time Tunnel, comes from Return to Innocence, by Enigma.
When we are young and life is new
Our every dream and wish can be true
We pray that god will only speed up the time
So much to do
But then the years go rushing by
No time to stop or wonder why
Those tomorrows have become yesterdays
And you see everything has changed but the world and its ways
– Time Tunnel
Sofy: Tell me about what novel electronic techniques or new software configurations, you have made to create your unique sound.
Cecilia: For my performative sound creation, I use machine learning techniques to study body movement, gestures, bio-data patterns and translate them into interactive visuals and sounds. I often use python libraries to achieve this goal. For music programming, I enjoy open-source! I use ChucK as my primary language but also use Pure Data and Max/MSP when it fits (especially when using microcomputers and designed hardware). For recording sound creation, I am a big fan of Eurorack and modular synth! I am also a crazy field recording person. I blend electric sounds and recorded sound from the analog world in experimental ways to narrate my sonic stories.
The vocalist stands in place and provides a combination of whispers and extended vocal input, processing them in real time with gesture and body movement. Two mobile performers produce various sounds using their own body gestures as controllers. The vocalist controls the overall sound effects using a variety of arm gestures. The core sound of the piece is the human voice, which the vocalist modulates as the sounds around her change. The other key sounds are a low-pitched heartbeat, a fuzzy static, a low-pitched ‘monk’ drone, and a looped .wav file of an electric spark. The heartbeat, static, and done were generated and controlled using FM synthesis.
The above performance harkens back to mimicry of nature, folding in our new electronic and algorithmic environments.
Besides creating spiritual software Cecilia also makes objects such as her electronic prayer wheel. I find this object incredibly meaningful as the prayer wheel, from its inception in the fourth century was intended to be an autonomous object that adds more prayer to the universe. There is no reason to exclude electronics from this conceptual framework (and in fact solar powered prayer wheels are quite popular in the Himalayas today).
Here is the description from Cecilia’s site:
The Tibetan Singing Prayer Wheel is a hybrid of a traditional spiritual instrument, the prayer wheel, and a traditional acoustic musical instrument, the Tibetan singing bowl, both of which are shown here below. The spiritual practice of the prayer wheel in Buddhism can be traced back two thousand years to Mahāyāna Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna. A Prayer Wheel consists of a free-spinning cylinder attached to a handle, which contains a multitude of prayers printed on a long roll of paper; it can be made in a wide range of sizes, styles, and materials. It is believed that spinning the wheel with a simple and repetitive motion induces relaxation and calm in the person performing the motion. A prayer wheel is often spun while chanting mantras. Clinical and scientific studies show evidence that prayer wheel practice can efficiently help to reduce anxiety and depression, increase well-being, and improve the outcomes in medicine and counseling. The Tibetan Singing Bowl is well known as a musical instrument. Rubbing a wooden stick in slow circular motion around the outer rim of the metal bowl at the appropriate speed and pressure excites a harmony of resonances. Due to its soothing and meditative musical nature, it is widely used in music therapy. In our Tibetan Singing Prayer Wheel, we create a new musical interface that combines the sounds and the gestures of playing the singing bowl with the gestures of the prayer wheel, along with voice modulation, using electronics and software.
Artist Cecilia Wu, AKA: Wu Xiao Ci works with themes and materials that stem from Tibetan Buddhism, she creates musical instruments and installations that focus on healing and embodiment through musical experience. The media theory pioneer, McLuhan, famously said that media extends the human body, I would argue that the machines we build and the intentions we put into them, extend the spirit, and Cecilia’s work in particular focuses on this connection.
The performer gives the system three inputs: vocals via a microphone, spinning and motion gestures from an electronically augmented prayer wheel, and button presses on a four-button RF transmitter to toggle sound processing layers. These inputs activate a virtual singing bowl, real-time sound synthesis, and voice processing. Finally, the resulting audio signal is amplified and projected into the performance space.
Cecilia’s work connects our electro-magnetic experience and traditional spirituality in a novel way that I hope to see more of in the future. It is a beautiful example of bringing these beautiful traditions of meditation and healing in to the world of smart machines and developing AI practices. As we develop algorithms with intelligence it’s important to intentionally embed spiritual in them as well, otherwise we may find ourselves imbuing them with spiritual bias instead.
Sofy: What does Sublime Sound mean to you?
Cecilia: I like simple things, extremely simple, but powerful. I would say maybe a chant. When I was 21 I’ve heard my Buddhist master chant for a Phowa practice. It’s a kind of chant for the people who are in their transition to the next life. They’re near that experience and they need some help some guidance. It’s a very special chant that sounds pretty. That was very special and it really hit me very deeply in my heart and soul. I like something that is completely simple but beyond human intelligence, beyond artifacts, beyond making, beyond composing.
Sofy: What is one of your dream projects yet unrealized?
Cecilia: In the fall we did a kind of an Augmented Reality installation at Memorial Church at the University. I composed the piece and invited people to do improvisations through telematics. It’s kind of a network music project.
The visual artists created Buddhist art and projected it on the Christian art right inside the church where they have that beautiful art wall and it’s a merging of the two. I really like that and want to do more, because that’s how we can attract younger generations to get involved in this ancient philosophy that could possibly help them, be useful, especially during this very stressful time, during this stressful human era in general. There’s a lot of mindfulness and spirituality in Buddhist philosophy which I want to do more with. I am envisioning songs like a sun circle that will entail a series of Buddhist poems. There are a lot of Tibetan master poets who are considered enlightened from the ancient times, they wrote poems during their meditative states which are really beautiful. I think they would help a lot of people if we can create art and music in the contemporary world and use contemporary artistic expressions for them. That’s what I’m envisioning to do next.
Bio:
Jiayue Cecilia Wu, PhD is an award-winning scholar, musician, multimedia technologist, and audio engineer. She has 10 years of diversified work experience in music and media technology companies such as Universal Music Group, EMI Records, and Shazam. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Music, Science, and Technology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology with an emphasis in Computer Music from the University of California Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on how music technology can augment the healing power of music. Her music has been performed in Asia, the U.S., Canada, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, and Europe. Her audiovisual work has been exhibited at museums and international arts and engineering societies such as the National Museum of China, Audio Engineering Society (AES), and IEEE. Her audiovisual composition “Mandala” was selected by the Denver Art Museum for its permanent collection.
About the interviewer:
Sofy Yuditskaya (@_the_s0urce_) is a site-specific media artist and educator working with sound, video, interactivity, projections, code, paper, and salvaged material. Her work focuses on techno-occult rituals, street performance, and participatory art. Sofy’s performances enact and reframe hegemonies, she works with materials that exemplify our deep entanglement with petro-culture and technology’s affect on consciousness. She has worked on projects at Eyebeam, 3LD, the Netherlands Institute voor Media Kunst, Steim, ARS Electronica, Games for Learning Institute, The Guggenheim (NYC), The National Mall and has taught at GAFFTA, MoMA, NYU, Srishti, and the Rubin Museum. She is a PhD Candidate in Audio-Visual Composition at NYU GSAS.
