"Nie entstand der Eindruck einer von Technik bestimmten Musik. Chua verwendet die Technik als Mittel zum Zweck, setzt sich musikalisch darüber hinaus und haucht damit ihrer Performance jenes Leben ein, das direkt die Emotionen anspricht."
-Anzeiger von Uster, Züriost
Performance at the ZHdK/KUG Doctoral Symposium with noise artist Chi Him Chik. This performance is a practical realization of the improvisation machine system developed at the August 2022 PhD residency at the ZHdK Immersive Arts Space.
This work incorporates transparent screens and overlapping overhead projectors as a visual representation for the AIYA improvisation machine. The transparent screens, visualizing the improvisation machine, serve simultaneously as a projection surface, sculpture, and as a space in itself. Intentionally, the overhead projections bleed from the transparent screens to the floor and walls to create an illusion of continuance between the machine and its environment, intimating that the two are one and the same. The fluid nature of this representation, combined with the shifting lighting conditions of the overhead projectors creates an environment that at times conceals and at other times reveals the human performing in the space. As such, the performer appears integrated within the form of the machine, in an attempt to destabilize the traditional tendency for the human performer to occupy the foreground of the performance.
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Contributions to the HKB 20 Years of Sound Arts Symposium
Performance:
(1) of "Arborescencia" for flute and live electronics by Felipe Tovar-Henao
(2) "Dragonfly" for sensor-augmented flute and improvisation machine by Melody Chua
Workshop:
"Techniques for applying motion gesture [recognition and mapping] as an expressive medium"
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This month-long residency focused on the development of a visual representation for the AIYA improvisation machine using transparent screens and overlapping overhead projectors. The transparent screens, visualizing the improvisation machine, serve simultaneously as a projection surface, sculpture, and as a space in itself. Intentionally, the overhead projections bleed from the transparent screens to the floor and walls to create an illusion of continuance between the machine and its environment, intimating that the two are one and the same. The fluid nature of this representation, combined with the shifting lighting conditions of the overhead projectors creates an environment that at times conceals and at other times reveals the human performing in the space. As such, the performer appears integrated within the form of the machine, in an attempt to destabilize the traditional tendency for the human performer to occupy the foreground of the performance.
The projections themselves fluctuate between (1) displaying overlays of technical UI elements that informs the performer of the machine's analysis and action processes and (2) revealing virtual 3-dimensional spaces the performer traverses through (via motion sensor). The visual focus is fleeting, not revealing too much of one or the other at a given time, inviting audiences to interpret the nuanced connections between the machine and its visual representation.
A performance of this work is scheduled to take place on 7. November 2022. This project takes place within the scope of the Dr. artium degree at the Kunstuniversität Graz and Zürich University of the Arts, under the dissertation title "Developing a Visual Framework for Improvisation Machines: Investigating Impacts on Human-Machine Interaction, Posthuman Identity, and Performance Narrative."
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Featured keynote speaker. Performances of compositions for flute and electronics by Benjamin D. Whiting and Felipe Tovar-Henao.
Part of the 2022 CHIME Festival at the University of Chicago
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Interactive sound for the installation River Oracle, as part of the exhibition Zones of Kinship, Love, and Playbour.
with Riikka Tauriainen, Paloma Ayala, Anne Laure Franchette, Kay Zhang
"What kinds of tools can we incorporate into a situated more-than-human practice? The collaborative project River Oracle by Paloma Ayala, Melody Chua, Anne-Laure Franchette, Riikka Tauriainen und Kay Zhang is envisioned as an artistic-feminist research and tool to develop methods around practices for working with oracles and to speculate on what kind of meaning a shift in antropocentric thinking can have.
The River Oracle is intended as a situational tool for self-reflection as well as for raising awareness of ecological and political issues. Sounds were collected from different places connected to the Rhine: in the riverbed, in hydroelectric power plants, in the harbor and in boats. These sounds are transformed into a composition reflected in a sound installation representing the Oracle. In the space there are cyanotype textiles imbued with stories of the Rhine."
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Interactive sound for the installation River Oracle, as part of the exhibition Emotions are Oceans at Radius
with Riikka Tauriainen, Paloma Ayala, Anne Laure Franchette, Kay Zhang
"What kinds of tools can we incorporate into a situated more-than-human practice? The collaborative project River Oracle by Paloma Ayala, Melody Chua, Anne-Laure Franchette, Riikka Tauriainen und Kay Zhang is envisioned as an artistic-feminist research and tool to develop methods around practices for working with oracles and to speculate on what kind of meaning a shift in antropocentric thinking can have.
The River Oracle is intended as a situational tool for self-reflection as well as for raising awareness of ecological and political issues. Sounds were collected from different places connected to the Rhine: in the riverbed, in hydroelectric power plants, in the harbor and in boats. These sounds are transformed into a composition reflected in a sound installation representing the Oracle. In the space there are cyanotype textiles imbued with stories of the Rhine."
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Showing of 360° film black box fading at the Kleintheatre Luzern.
black box fading reflects Chua’s experience developing and working with a musical improvisation machine, and it can be seen as a transient imagination of this machine’s memories and dreams. This 22-min film in 360°/VR is composed out of a series of recorded improvisations made between the machine and Chua herself, as she experiences the machine as at times an external chamber music partner and at other times an extension of her own body. Occupying the realm between concert documentation and narrative film, and between physical and virtual spaces, this work challenges shifting representations of orientation and disorientation, distance and intimacy, vulnerability, human-machine agency, and immersive (dis)embodiment.
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"The Contemporary Art Music Project (CAMP) will host its inaugural CAMPGround festival from 24–26 March in the vibrant downtown areas of Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida. CAMP seeks instrumentalists who will perform selected compositions and collaborate with 2022 CAMP performing artists and invited composers. Our featured performers in 2022 include Arda Cabaoglu, Melody Chua, Zachary Hale, Jamie Jordan, Eunmi Ko, Robert McCormick and the McCormick Percussion Group, Doug O’Connor, Carol Tsai, Sini Virtanen, and Katherine Weintraub."
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"The Non-Convenience Store" | Exhibition of queered games at Kein Museum, Zürich
"The Catch ('22)" by Melody Chua
A spin on the traditional game of catch, The Catch ('22) was an artistic exploration on how one might attempt to develop empathy for traditionally (and literally) discarded, "thrown (away)," objects, such as the ball used in the game of catch. By creating tension between the drive to complete the game's directive ("Throw the ball 100 times to win the game") and the opportunity to listen to the spoken stories of the ball, the game invited participants to question their own motivations for playing and to confront what 'winning' actually means for them.
About Queering Games:
"Queering Games ist ein künstlerisches Forschungsprojekt mit dem Ziel, neue Formen für Kunstwerke, Ausstellungen und deren Rezeption zu finden. Der Titel ist Programm: In Anlehnung an die Queer Theory dient uns Spielen als Methode, gesellschaftliche (Spiel-)Regeln herauszufordern. Am Projektende präsentieren wir dem Publikum innerhalb eines Kunst-Game-Festivals digitale Ausstellungsformate, welche die Erkenntnisse aus dem Projekt interaktiv erfahrbar machen. Laufend weitere Informationen gibt es auf dem Queering Games Blog."
https://www.keinmuseum.ch/queering-game-blog
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Featured Guest artist (Null-state), hybrid performance with sensor-augmented flute (Chaosflöte) and live coding
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Music video release for Max Petersen Trio's "No SM" as part of his new album LiberA.
"The forthcoming full-length release from German-Australian pianist / composer Max Petersen is titled LiberA. This fusion of the feminine and masculine aspects of the Roman god of freedom is very telling. It evokes the notion of pursuing freedoms: personal, civil, musical, and creative. It also speaks to an active engagement with the synthesis of apparent opposites: jazz / classical, synthetic / acoustic, formally restrictive / improvisationally unbound." - Lukasz Polowczyk
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