"Emote, a time capsule"
"Emote: a time capsule"
An interactive online installation of soundscapes, poetry, and visual art
“My life is created as I narrate, and my memory grows stronger with writing; what I do not put in words on a page will be erased by time.
I was initiated into the ineradicable vice of telling stories. Writing is a long process of introspection; it is a voyage toward the darkest caverns of consciousness, a long, slow meditation. I write feeling my way in silence, and along the way discover particles of truth, small crystals that fit in the palm of one hand and justify my passage through this world.”
-Isabel Allende
*password: “sophie”
instructions for viewing:
click on the links that turn orange to move forward, click on the music tracks to play
use desktop view, avoid scrolling or back button
use full screen, each page should fit in the window
“Emote, a time capsule” is an experimental performance installation of the sounds, images, and words of a fictional heroine, Sophie. Living in a dystopian society, Sophie is a paradoxical artist who indulges in her cynical yet sentimental self-reflections. She works in a corrupt industry that commodifies and sells the experience of emotions through live actor simulations. As a writer for a company specializing in ‘romantic sentimentality’, Sophie creates personalized archaic fairy tales and love stories for her clients. The installation represents the digital memory box in which Sophie scatters her collection of music, voice, and sound memos, journal entries and poems, short films, and sketches and photographs. Over the course of 3 weeks, this interactive project will be performed digitally using a website and social media platforms. It will be divided into two sections: ‘static’ and ‘live’.
“we can
invent memories
that fit your fantasies”
The ‘static’ section will include three elements: “text, images, and sounds”. Under ‘text’ is “The [blank] Journal”, Sophie’s memoir in four “Ballades” (chapters) detailing the period of her life when she writes the horror-romance script for a customer named Nick. This text explores numerous styles including the poetic and erotic, the absurdist, and the colloquial, unveiling Sophie’s internal dialogue with a self-deprecating voice that mocks her idealistic views. Under ‘images’ is the art book, “E-mote”, a collage of photographs featuring Sophie’s shoes and shadows, juxtaposed with sketches and short poems. The element of ‘sounds’ will include recordings of 1. classical solo piano works by Beethoven, Prokofiev, and Wild, 2. improvisations, 3. soundscapes, and 4. poetry readings and monologues, a cappella or layered with other audios. The ‘static’ section will be released weekly in 4 segments to follow the four “Ballades”.
The ‘live’ section will be 5-minute performances livestreamed daily as snapshots of Sophie’s life. Organized into three “Suites”, each video is titled after a baroque dance in homage to Bach’s Keyboard Suites. They will focus on improvisations in classical styles but also explore other audio-visual formats from the ‘static’ section. The livestreams will be broadcast through YouTube and posted on the website blog where along with Facebook and Instagram audiences can converse with Sophie by leaving questions, comments, and ideas.
This project extends the genre of magical realism and challenges classical music to relate to modern storytelling formats that are interactive, immersive, and non-linear. Sophie’s fantastic and peculiar world comments on our own human condition and its philosophical perplexities. Her love for classical art reflects her desire to reawaken sincerity in a skeptical society. Using dark introspection, witty humor, and unapologetic earnestness, Sophie’s voice is a response to the complexities in our culture today.
With the cancellation of so many summer music festivals, this 3-week project serves as a humble substitute for artists and audiences to continue celebrating art and connecting with one another. While preserving the spontaneity of live performances, I hope to enlighten the depth of classical masterworks using the subtlety of soundscapes, the vulnerability of journal entries, the intensity of images, and the bewilderment of poetry. “Emote, a time capsule” will be a densely moving memory box to touch the audience and to explore the possibilities in which we can communicate, express, and experience time.
“ Welcome to the [blank] journal.
Thank you for your Time(lessness), for sharing and experiencing this passage of Time with me, in the Present gift of this Moment, to praise this ordinary speckle of a legacy, and then deleting it.
Listen. Listen and notice that you can grasp nothing and everything from Time.
Listen nobly with a defiant acceptance of – art, bewilderment, of (im)permanence, of fathomless stillness within movement. Of space. Motion, emotion.
Time, flowing in choreography. Notes, breathing, (heart) beating.
Kiss me tenderly with your memory.
Please silence all electronic devices and refrain from the use of video recording or flash photography. Thank you and please enjoy the show.”
Additional Information
Sophie’s storyline, “The [blank] Journal,” is from a larger fantasy universe named “Zenkora”. An interdisciplinary arts initiative, Zenkora Studios uses this original universe for artists of various mediums to express their creative voices. For over ten years, creator Wesley Chu and his team have been working together to build a cohesive vision of Zenkora’s facets, characters, and storylines. In 2016, Zenkora was publicly presented for the first time in Boston through the multimedia concert, "Zenkora, A Brief History”. In 2017, a larger scale production was held in Calgary, “Zenkora, The Seven Eras”. New works of music, dance, drama, poetry, literature, animation, and visual art came together under the collaboration of over 80 artists. In recent years, the Los Angeles team has been working on an immersive theater project, “Shatter Night”. The Montreal team is in the initial stages of creating “Labyrinth of Tears”, an hour-long operetta commission by pianist Tong Wang, composer Jonas Tarm, and poet Stanford Cheung. “Labyrinth of Tears” features an original storyline that explores mental health through the fantastical setting of a wizardry schoolgirl’s struggle with dissociative identity disorder. While our team is currently limited in moving forward with physical productions, this digital project, “Emote”, will serve as an instrumental steppingstone for advancing the future of our collective.