Story

An untouchable story sealed in the transparent space:

Whether was it caused by being the object of his indulgence that lead to his neglected kingship, or merely a victim for making up to the destructed integrity of the courtiers, for whatever reason, the incomparable beauty, beloved imperial concubine, was forced to take up the blame for the defeated war. She was strangled in the deserted valley where the wild weeds grew high, took her in full.

For the rest of his life, the staggered king lived under the fading glory of his throne. Having to put up with the delphic surveillance of the courtiers, maids, and eunuchs, he endured overwhelming rumors and gossips alone. Repeatedly, details of his languished love life were been elaborated in between whispers, passing around from people to people, mixed into the small talks between imperial politics and military sanctions, then were been carried away by the galloping horses, spreading wide amongst politicians, royalties, merchants, and commoners' ferocious drunken laughter.

Finally, tired of such disturbance, the embarrassed king commanded an apparatus technician to construct a wind cave, a colossal palace-like underground structure, that swallowed sound. Day after days, night after nights, sucking up every murmuring speech under the sky.

From then on during the morning conferences, the king looked down upon the animated mouthparts of his courtiers with a smile, not hearing a word, but enjoying the silence that was ever so peaceful.

For more information about the digital sculptures, please go to: The Specimen of Memory

Sealed Sounds

The object is sealed in transparent Lucite with a special sealing technique. The blocked object is comparable to the insects in amber, frozen in time. It could be a thing excavated from ruins; a trapped organ, or a machine. Following their own imagination, viewers guess the original functions of the gears constituting this sophisticated machine.

The story of this project is inspired by the life of Emperor Ming of the Tang Dynasty after his beloved concubine Yang had been hanged in the Mawei Mountain. I imagine the complex gears are motivated by the endless flows of rumors and the high volume noises echoing in the sound factory. This factory has been frozen in the void, memories have gone to oblivion, and sounds that were manufactured and stored here have been sealed forever in static time.

Outside the thick glass, I imagine that as the sealing material was injected and then gradually congealed, the gears slowed down and finally stopped. The sounds, not unlike the insects trapped in the increasingly sticky amber, are halted in the air eternally.