photo and video by James Zhang
This work explores interactive wearable art. three distance sensors are carefully embedded in flowers on my dress. A lilypad arduino, a speaker, and batteries are hidden on the back of the fan I hold . when the viewers use a boom microphone to closely examine the body to search signal, sharp sounds will occur.
The body is an interface. It is not only a site of intercultural encounter, but also a field of intersection of material and symbolic forces. This work doesn’t address much functionality but emotions, memory, fantasy and experience with awareness of body as intimate communicator and symbolic interface. It focuses more on viewers’ experiences: what is sensed, and what cognitive; and aesthetic processes are provoked during the interactive performance.
Silence is a sound that needs to be heard. Silence is meditation that needs to be read, a Ding, a sound to catch attention, a way of making things public, bringing light to shadow and stimulating public reflection and debate about the key issues of our time. Silence is also the intervention of crowd that needs to be seen. Silent doesn’t mean voiceless; if we don’t speak out, it doesn’t mean we don’t care.
Silent Participant is a term that I used to describe Asians living in the West who are often accused of having no opinions, of being indifferent to any politics, and of often sticking in their own ethnic groups. The silent participants are groups of visible minorities, often invisible but needing to be understood.
