The Oral Logic

installation view, solo exhibition at Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto, Canada, 2019.

Garrulous Guts 2019

dimension variable

two-channel animation, subwoofers, clear gelatin capsules, anti-biotics, anti-estrogen hormone, air ducts, generative algorithmic composition (in collaboration with Jason Doell)

Cmd & Ctrl Chewing Gum 2019

2.5”x 2.5”, limited edition of 30

natural chicle gum base, sugar, dextrose, cane syrup, wafer paper, edible ink

PURCHASE OVER ⤻

Qi 2019

dimension variable

single-channel video(2’52”)

ERROAR!4

ERROAR!#4 2019

dimension variable

single-channel video(3’25”), interactive web-based application, laser-engraved mirror, 3D prints, generative poetry on paper scroll, algorithmic composition (in collaboration with Jason Doell)

WORK DETAILS ⤻

orishormonaspina

Deep Aware Triads – orishormonaspina 2019

36” diameter each

giclée print (triptych)

WORK DETAILS ⤻

The exhibition is an assemblage of four multimedia installations that expand The Oral Logic thread out of Ye’s extensive research on the poetics and politics of human-machine coupling.

Turning the gaze inward on bodily systems, the installations are conceptualized using the cannibalistic metaphor of “eating and being eaten” to contemplate on our dialectic relationships with technology. We as bio-cultural-technological amalgams have always merged our mental activities with the operations of technologies in a broader sense. For example, writing is a technology we use to make sense of ourselves and the world as it reconfigures our consciousness. Having entered the electronic landscape, we, both consumer and feeder devour and chew, digest and absorb electronic culture in all domains. From eating to speaking, from the molecular to the epistemological, our body and psyche are subject to the cybogian economy where massive networks show affective and cognitive agencies and planetary computation is mobilized by the entangled power of political ideologies, economic imbalance, and cultural disparities. It is in such a context where The Oral Logic attempts to question “to what extent would this symbiosis evolve?”

The four installations interweave the The Oral Logic as if our minds already operate as silicon-carbon intelligence hybrids. At the centre of the space located pumping low-frequency sounds, which activate the sculptural diagrams on the wall and animated digestive system mapped with malleable texts. Machine learning algorithms are employed to produce text, sound and image during artist’s process of collaborating with digital bodies.

The metaphor of cannibalism in Brazilian literature and translation theory offers ways to rethink cultural assimilation in colonial and post-colonial conditions. Borrowing the same idea to think about technological incorporation, Ye blends e-wastes with living organisms and proposes “vomit as a method” to redefine and reclaim human agencies in the hyper-control societies.

 

“In the centre of the space, the two-channel sound and animation installation, Garrulous Guts (2019), wraps around an entanglement of air ducts. The work’s audio was created through a collection of sound footage from online searches for “people vomiting” and speech clips generated by WaveNet, a feedforward neural network for generating advanced Text-to-Speech results. While the speech was trained in English, that was not what was heard emanating from the installation. Ye created new speech that were, quasi-English, which were then interpreted into sounds that didn’t make sense to English-speaking viewers or would even register as a recognized human-based language, potentially creating a new human-machine hybrid language. Despite its mechanical and cryptic tone, the soundtrack held some familiarity in structure and pace for my auditory sense to digest as dialect.”

— Emily Fitzpatrick, “Review: Xuan Ye – The Oral Logic” (Peripheral Review, 2020)

“Through intentional collaboration with machines, Ye recoups agency. A low-frequency crackling permeated the small room of “The Oral Logic,” part of a generative music score like ASMR but in a register of minor terror. The score popped and rumbled from two subwoofers, one upturned to hold empty and half-filled clear pill capsules in its speaker. Corrugated air ducts twisted around this installation — collectively titled Garrulous Guts (2019) — as physical stand-ins for its eponymous organs. An accompanying projection animated intestines in cyber blue and dusky pink, mapped with texts from translation theory, which wormed their outsides and innards through the viewer’s gaze.”

— Joy Xiang, “Review: Xuan Ye – The Oral Logic” (Canadian Art, 2020)

 

xi xi

the solo LP xi xi 息息 is a compilation of live and studio improvisations recorded between 2016 and 2019. Although the online description refers to it as Ye’s debut LP, the recording nonetheless marks the end of her current approach to music; she’ll be taking a break from the kind of improvising that has formed the foundation of her current practice, and xi xi 息息 is her sonic summary of that work.

The B side of the album is one live set from 2016 that is cut into five different pieces. The A side features four discrete tracks, each using a different setup. Electronic sounds figure heavily on both sides, either as haunting backdrops or built into blooming transitions that force the music forwards or sideways. But while many of the techniques on the album could plausibly fall in the electroacoustic music genre, electronic effects aren’t something Ye is concerned with. On the first track, below beyond green 绿, she sampled three octaves of her vocal range and fed them into a Max patch on her computer. Rather than trying to change the sounding qualities of her voice, though, Ye simply used the patch to randomize the note sequences; in the final track, the samples themselves remain totally unprocessed…..

On the first three tracks of xi xi 息息, Ye uses an electronic module for real-time biofeedback called MIDI Sprout, which, when touched, translates electrolytes present in the body into MIDI. Others have used the module primarily as a way of sonifying plants. ‘Plants never say that they want to be heard,’ Ye says—and, after a pause., ‘but I use my own body.’

Listening to those tracks, you can sense the audible connections between the voice, instruments, and electronics…..”

from Xuan Ye: Plurality & Dissonance by Sara Constant on Musicworks (Issue. 136) 2020

xi xi 息息 is Xuan Ye’s debut LP. Compiled from solo improvisations across a three year span, the recordings comprise a fascinating document of X’s foundational ideas: free improvisation, computational randomness, noise of the field, hybrid chaos of gestures and mediated bio-electrical currents.

xi xi 息息 is out on November 29th on Halocline Trance (LP, WAV). All songs by Xuan Ye. Mastered by David Psutka. A Side (2019) & bonus track (2016) recorded by Jason Doell; B side (improvisation live set Nov. 16, 2016) recorded by Aaron Dawson. This album features artwork by Véronique Sunatori + Sara Maston, with calligraphy by Xuan Ye. Distributed by SRD and available to purchase via fine music retailers worldwide.

xi xi

Photo by Mary Chen, 2019

 

 

ERROAR!#4 The Oral Logic

dimension variable

single-channel HD video(3’25”, sound), interactive web-based application, laser-engraved mirror, 3D prints, generative poetry on paper scroll, algorithmic composition (in collaboration with Jason Doell)

ERROAR!#4 contemplates on the phenomenon of “cannibalism” as a metaphor for cultural and technological assimilation, especially in the process of human-artificial-intelligence coupling. Entirely composed of stock videos, the single-channel video essay is derived from an online anecdote about the first case of “virtual cannibalism” conducted by AI agents during DARPA’s early experiments. The piece of generative poetry titled “Past Said Lore” on the paper scroll is co-authored with a recurrent neural network to write in the style of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Through a webcam and a mirror, the networked software “misrecognizes” human faces as “objects”, due to incorrect and incomplete training and learning. Being objectified by an object in error creates an infinite feedback loop between the mirror and the camera, performing a metaphorical autophagy, just like the closed loop of human skeleton eating tailbone.


The Erroar! Series speaks to the errant and noise that emerge from experiments of intelligence agents for understanding human’s cognitive functions through artificial neural networks, and how these technological errors open up new creative potentials that in return reconfigure our perceptions, affect and imaginations. Most visual-textual-sonic materials involved are generated from the process in which artist use open data in various formats to train prevalent machine learning algorithms.

What Nebula, What Hyperbolic Light, What Flora and Fauna

What Nebula, What Hyperbolic Light, What Flora and Fauna

CG animation (11mins) configured for 18 Christie Digital Microtiles.

Fig.4 installation view at Ellephant, Montreal, Canada, 2019. Video visible from sundown to sunrise in the Charlotte Street window. This project is a co-production with EdVideo realized thanks to the financial support of the Government of Quebec and Ontario.

preview link

What Nebula, What Hyperbolic Light, What Flora and Fauna speculates on the idea of “habitat” in the context of technological acceleration and urban sprawl. It uses “garden” as a metaphor for re-imagining an ideal habitat where human, natural and man-made materials coexist. It incorporates interactive poetry, imagined organisms, with repurposed obsolete technology and e-waste. WNWHLWFF is about dwelling in such an accelerated future of landscapes, where the imposed rhythms of existing are bent for a pause or a reflection.

Breath Fractals

Breath Fractals by Xuan Ye/Chik White


Initially, the music of Chik White (Darcy Spidle of rural Nova Scotia) and Xuan Ye (Toronto) are drastically different. Spidle improvises using the jaw harp, one of the world’s most ancient instruments, on a series of stimulating and freshly invigorating releases, including two recent tapes on Notice. Xuan Ye has developed a dense, fascinating, radically cutting edge synthesis of video and aural performance, somatics, and computer programming, engaging acoustic instruments, voice, field recordings, and strangled frequencies. Spidle has a deep and intense relationship with the ocean; its many guises and characteristics have provided a catalyst for a personal and unique body of work, one that is devoted to his oceanic surroundings and the natural phenomena inherent to its existence. Both artists reference not only outsider folk traditions, but also esoteric strains of the avant-garde, noise, field recordings, and sound collage.

This intimate release reveals their strong musical interplay, evident in the physicality and palpability of the tracks presented. Both are dedicated to the generation of raw sound, while reducing language into its constituent physical parts, as if dramatizing the struggle of human expression. They explore instrument and voice along what feels like very short and concise distances. At times, they branch out into explorations of spaces and objects that feel curious and almost narrative, with the “voice” often present but never remotely understandable. Both artists’ boundary-pushing of physical performance finds a new route in this collaboration.


precariousium

XY: voice, Toronto ON, 2017

satiate

CW: jaw harp and voice, Chezzetcook NS, 2018

as if by a bell

XY: voice and percussion, Long Island NY, 2016

long may I sleep

XY: voice, CW: jarp harp, Toronto ON / Chezzetcook NS, 2017

homing hymn

CW: jaw harp and voice, Cheezetcook NS, 2018

polyphony of breath fractals no.2

XY: voice, CW: jaw harp, Toronto ON / Chezzetcook NS, 2017

polyphony of breath fractals no.1

XY: voice, CW: jaw harp, Toronto ON / Chezzetcook NS, 2017

wodd

CW: jaw harp, Chezzetcook NS, 2017

escalate, escalate

XY: field recordings, various, 2017

omnivore machine

XY: field recording, CW: vocal noise, Toronto ON / Chezzetcook NS, 2017

crane

XY: field recordings, various, 2016

Recorded by Xuan Ye and Darcy Spidle
Mastered by Kyle McDonald
Videos & Source artwork by Xuan Ye
Layout by E. Lindorff-Ellery
Letterpress printed by Small Fires Press, New Orleans
Duplicated by Cryptic Carousel

feng shan

feng shan 1.0 2018

For Fans, Microphones, Electronics

Live at Emergents Series (curated by Sara Constant), Music Gallery, 2018. Fig. 1 & 3 Photo by Claire Harvie. Fig. 2 Photo by Kristian Fourier

feng shan 2.0 2019

ZMY031 split tape

Whose wind is that?
Never flow a fan.
It’s not the sound,
All glaciers melt
not the move.
of distant,
confused waves.
The only other sound
Is the break
And birds awake.
The spectrum is
a flocculent spectrum.
Recurring ebbs.
Sister. Snows.
Snare. Sling.
Plethora of
Vibrant matters.
You, and me,
and their clouds
Network,
And network,
And networks.
Low voices expand.
The wind is breathing,
Not the fan.
Unformed and deep,
It’s not the wind.

2018

Fin

Fin

fin 2018

dimension variable

interactive web installation

Permalink: https://app.pureapparat.us/fin/

commissioned by Bcc:, Decoy Magazine in 2018

fin 2017 – 2018

dimension variable

real-time image data feed projection, 15 laser-engraved mirrors, mirror film, metal structures

Fin invites scanning eyes and scattered attentions for a grand cruise in the G=A=R=D=E=N teeming with life and stories depicted in the ocean of stock images, where a total textual-visual archive that is also an ideal existence constitutes a simulacrum of the over-simplified world, the textual-visual environment that feeds us and that at the same time we interoperate within. The title Fin refers to the shape of the installation which looks like the flattened appendage commonly seen on aquatic earthlings used to navigate in the water. And in Fin, which also means the end of film or narrative in French, the Fin cuts through the pixel waves from one urban landscape (commercial signages) to another that is constructed by a networked archive of stock photography, deploying vision and hope for the ideal habitat or the end place we call “home”.

IN BETWEEN () WE OSCILLATE

IN BETWEEN () WE OSCILLATE

duration & dimension variable

2018,app

Permalink: https://app.pureapparat.us/INBETWEEN()WEOSCILLATE/

IN BETWEEN () WE OSCILLATE

installation view, Soft Refractions, Toronto, Canada 2018. Photo by Polina Teif.

IN BETWEEN () WE OSCILLATE animates pairs of English antonyms as data in the form of a sound wave spectrum. The words are from an antonym database found in an ESL textbook. As the words scroll across the screen, a soundtrack is played back that translates the visualization of all antonym pairs as one spectrogram into audible frequencies. Considering language as materials, and the web as infrastructure and site, IN BETWEEN () WE OSCILLATE sculpts a neon light that is always on the move, and impossible to materialize in the physical realm. The disquieting statement literally conveys the precarity of our time — we exist within the bifurcations, dilemmas, and dichotomies. It echoes the current global socio-political environment, where the proliferation of the digital and non-human, as well as diasporization and migration, point to a reality and subjectivity that are in a constant flux of oscillation.

EveryLetterCyborg

EveryLetterCyborg V1.3 2018

duration & dimension variable

interactive web installation, webVR, projection mapping, generative music

installation views, ​digital artist in residency, InterAccess, 2018. Fig. 1 – 6 Photo by Megan Maclaurin

EveryLetterCyborg V1.2 2017 – 2018

dimension variable

twitterbot @qletrcyborg, raspberry pi, thermal printer module, microphone stand, laser-engraved mirror

EveryLetterCyborg V1.1 2016 – 2017

dimension variable

interactive web installation, tablet, keyboard, speakers

Fig. 12 installation view, Border Resonance, Goethe Institut, Beijing, China 2018. Photo by Wenxin Zhang

Et Cetera

Et Cetera
Et Cetera
Et Cetera
Et Cetera
Et Cetera

installation views, solo exhibition, Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Canada, 2018

I forget,etc.(after X. Y.) by Fan Wu 2018

black & metalic gold dual-tone risograph accordion fold, limited edition of 200

Reader’s Guide 2018

dimension variable

metal sculpture, mirror film, giclée print on film, algorithmic composition (2′), animation projection

“… I forget that if what you see is where you go, then all seeing is a censored prophet that fails (because of neurosis or paralysis) to act in accordance with its own oracles.

I forget the efficient linearity of human reading (frustrating; rusty with the will to make sense) and learn the stochastic programmability of the machine (nested recursions: birds in cyborg-synaptic teleport.) I become not apart from the humus of inhuman refuse, the floppy callousness of computer script.

I forget how to chart a course between the gravity of identity (flesh, father, hearth) and the anonymity of the digital.

I forget, rote fig, frig toe. I forget — ego rift — grief to forge it. Heal us, eros of foe grit. O He Fears Soul: I forget sentimentality and open-hearted relatability to forge a new, colder, but no less tender form of subjectivity.

I forget whether Zhuangzi thought voice was the dream of water or water the dream of voice. I barely remember vaporwave — soft subliminality that brought back visions of Sonic the Hedgehog — and the hard limits of nostalgia. I fully remember Freud’s primordial oceanic feeling of being one with the universe; but to feel it here, in the 21st century, means to feel it homelessly: even total unity cannot undo my nomad code.

I forget language like it was the lie of noise…”

— Fan Wu  “I Forget, etc. (after X.Y.)”

Et Cetera is woven together with five works that are essentially five bodies of writings as digital poetry — a poetic practice that is made possible by digital media and technology in which aesthetic possibilities are extended through the semantic impact of alphabets, visuals, data, etc. Interlaced by multimedial meaning-making, Et Cetera re(produces) installations that are engineered with utilizing real-time data feeds, animated letterforms, performative instructions and sensory synthesis.

Exploring different scenarios of human-machine coupling that consequently lead to multifarious illegibility, Et Cetera amplifies the noise of information overflow in the concurrent mediascape with its rhizomatic networks that are largely beyond our conscious apprehension. On the B-side, Et Cetera is also involved with writing about the alphabetic writing apparatus, the role of artist as author as human-machine-centaur and the networked subjectivity.

Related writing: Et Cetera by Xuan Ye