PLAN8T AIR S21 “The invisible sound”

Shihua Ma is a new media artist, a teacher of electronic music composition at the Department of Composition of the China Conservatory of Music and a PhD in electronic music composition at the Central Conservatory of Music.He specializes in computer music and audiovisual art, and as a cross-media artist, he continues to publish relevant works at major international computer music events. His interactive multimedia works have won prizes in the MUSICAOUSTICA-BEIJING.

新媒体艺术家，中国音乐学院作曲系电子音乐作曲专业教师，中央音乐学院电子音乐作曲专业博士。他专注于计算机音乐与视听艺术，作为跨媒体艺术家，在国际重要计算机音乐活动中持续发表相关作品。所创作的互动多媒体类作品曾在北京国际电子音乐节比赛中获奖，并在历年亚洲新媒体艺术日中发表讲演

Flowing Light | 《流光》
Installation / Interactive New Media

I am an electronic music composer and a teacher. I started my artistic career by playing the piano and learning composition. Until now, part of the classes I teach at the China Conservatory of Music are still composition theory classes.

About 10 years ago, I started to program with computers and combine them with music. Programming is a more powerful music sheet for me, and it gives me more methods to organize sounds. In the beginning, randomness and parameter preset helped me create a lot of novel content, but I believe that only by adding human control can make sound become music art. Therefore, I started to learn programming techniques in depth and added interactive features to my work. Driven by different sensor data, the performer’s gestures can be connected with the musical gestures, which is similar to the concept of traditional musical performance. I insist on bringing the material organization and structure of traditional composition into computer music creation. These concepts help me achieve a balance between rationality and sensibility, control and randomness.

I also create digital images with code, that helps me bring objects, photos, and texts into the performance, forming an interpretation of sound, and turning my music into a comprehensive art. When I work with a sensor, the image captured by the sensor becomes the sound controller, allowing the audience to become the performer of my work. This characteristic makes my works require the participation of the audience and has a potential character of installation art. So I began to adopt some concert works into installations through sensors and visual means. For example, Flowing Light is such a work. It was originally a multimedia electronic music work I created for NIME 2021. In the "The Invisible Sound" exhibition, I adapted it into an installation, and now it is an audio-visual instrument played by the audience.

Creating a new connection between the auditory space and the visual space is the concept I want to achieve through creation, and I hope you can feel it.

我是一名电子音乐作曲家和教师。我的艺术生涯是从弹钢琴和学习作曲开始的。直到现在，我在中国音乐学院教授的部分课程仍然是作曲理论课。

 大约10年前，我开始使用电脑编程并将它们与音乐结合起来。编程对我来说是一张更强大的乐谱，它为我提供了更多组织声音的方法。一开始，随机性和参数预设帮助我创作了很多新颖的内容，但我相信只有加入人为控制才能让声音成为音乐艺术。因此，我开始深入学习编程技术，并为我的作品添加了交互功能。在不同的传感器数据的驱动下，表演者的手势可以与音乐的姿态联系起来，这类似于传统音乐表演的概念。我坚持将传统作曲的物质组织和结构带入电脑音乐创作中。这些概念帮助我在理性与感性、控制与随机之间取得平衡。

 我还用代码创建数字图像，这有助于我将物体、照片和文本带入表演中，形成对声音的诠释，并将我的音乐变成一门综合艺术。当我使用传感器工作时，传感器捕获的图像成为声音控制器，让观众成为我作品的表演者。这种特点使我的作品需要观众的参与，具有装置艺术的潜在特性。于是我开始通过传感器和视觉手段将一些音乐会作品融入装置中。《流光》就是这样一部作品。它原本是我为NIME 2021创作的多媒体电子音乐作品，在这次展览中，我将其改编成装置，它现在成了观众来演奏的视听乐器。

 在听觉空间和视觉空间之间建立新的联系是我想通过创作实现的概念，希望你能感受到。