Rites of Resonance uses a waist-high, five-sided plinth to encapsulate the bamboo flute’s journey through the Five Elements—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water—triggering touch-activated sensors that unveil layered projections and soundscapes on a central circular screen. As visitors engage each element, the overlapping chapters of image and music embody the cyclical, generative logic of Chinese cosmology.
Project Video
Abstract
“How might we attune our own sensorium to the cyclical logic of Chinese cosmology?” Guided by this inquiry, Rites of Resonance is an interactive installation that invites participants to trace the bamboo flute’s metamorphosis from living sprout to resonant instrument through the lens of the Five Elements (木 Wood, 火 Fire, 土 Earth, 金 Metal, 水 Water). The work is centered on a waist-high, pentagonal plinth whose five faces each conceal a bespoke sensor corresponding to one elemental phase of the flute-making process. A gentle touch on any face awakens a synchronized audiovisual vignette on a central circular screen, revealing: sap rising through bamboo culms (Wood), flames tempering raw stalks (Fire), clay and mineral powders sealing pores (Earth), metal chisels carving precise tone holes (Metal), and clear water curing the finished instrument (Water).
Unlike conventional documentary or gallery presentations, Rites of Resonance leverages livecoding techniques to weave real-time code-driven visuals and generative soundscapes into the fabric of the installation. Each sensor activation triggers not only a pre-recorded film segment but also a custom-composed musical layer derived from fragments of the bamboo flute’s natural acoustics and transformed through dynamic algorithms. As successive sensors are engaged, episodes overlap and interweave—mirroring the cyclical interplay and mutual generation (相生) central to Five-Element theory. This overlapping choreography of images, textures, and tones embodies the cosmos’s continuous processes of transformation, decay, and renewal.
By foregrounding active participation, the installation reconceptualizes visitors as “quiet catalysts” whose tactile interactions set in motion an ever-evolving performance. The physical act of touch translates into digital reverberations, collapsing boundaries between material craft and immaterial code, between human agency and elemental forces. This multisensory synergy not only heightens audience immersion but also reframes the bamboo flute—traditionally both musical instrument and cultural symbol—as a living node within broader cycles of natural and cosmological balance.
Through an iterative design process involving ethnographic study of bamboo cultivation, collaborative coding workshops, and iterative user testing, Rites of Resonance situates itself at the intersection of sound art, material culture, and ecological philosophy. The project contributes to contemporary discourse on interactive media by demonstrating how traditional cosmologies can inform new paradigms of human–machine–environment entanglement. Ultimately, Rites of Resonance encourages a recalibration of perception: prompting us to listen, touch, and see in accordance with the same elemental rhythms that have shaped Chinese thought and practice for millennia.
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