melting score 冰墨畫聲 (2019-)
Improvised performance
ice, water, field recording, ink, paper, glass, handmade instruments, electronics, temperature, body
melting score 是我自 2019 年展開的即興音樂繪畫演出。作為月潮搖籃曲的延續，欲探索聲音裝置作為即興表演中的流動可能性。原為被觀看的客體冰球裝置，移轉成具有能動性的主體冰墨，冰成為畫器、成為樂器，同時間自製麥克風錄下身體的延展，與紙上墨水軌跡奏成的聲響，是跨感官的同時即興。畫器消失，聲音浮出，我們成為彼此的時間，聲音記憶成為墨譜活在紙上：閱讀即是演奏，觀看即是聆聽。
melting score is a solo improvised performance of music and drawing, begun in 2019 and reshaped with each space it enters, that brings the installation moon tide lullaby to life: those ice sculptures become subjects that perform, rather than objects to be observed.
The ice becomes both brush and instrument. As I draw with the melting sphere, a contact microphone hidden beneath the paper picks up the vibration of its movement; at the same time, meltwater drips onto another handmade microphone below. Both are routed through a synthesiser in real time, while the physical sound of the falling drops stays in the room — the falling drops become the rhythm of the piece, set by the melting itself. Drawing and sounding happen at once, across the senses. The brush disappears, the sound surfaces, and the fragile sonic memory remains as an ink score living on paper: to read it is to play, to watch is to listen.
I chose ice spheres of different sizes; each takes a different time to freeze and to melt, like a life moving from birth to death. Pouring black ink into the moulds, they became frozen ink spheres. Instead of writing ink onto ice as in Melting Voice (2018–) and watching it dissolve, here the sphere itself became the brush I painted and drew with. Holding its constantly changing texture in my hand, the fragile sound of ice became audible. My warmth melts the ice, and its cold pricks my hand; my hand remembers its texture as the ice takes shape from my touch. This is what I call inter-vocalizing — a reverse tension between the work and the artist, in which we become each other's time. Sitting on the floor, I found myself turned into a medium melting with black ink, devoting myself to the stage, to the floor, to the audience, to the unknown.
melting score in Heightened States of Awareness: A Performance Evening, IKLECTIK, London, 2019
melting score in Moon Melts In Flowing Ice: Iris Chun-Tzu Chang Solo Exhibition, YueJin Art Museum, Tainan, 2020.
Photo 3-6 by 馬祥騰
Photo 3-6 by 馬祥騰
melting score in Lacking Sound Festival #125 at NTUA Center for Sound Arts and Acoustics Research, New Taipei, 2023.
Photo by: RiMao
Left to right: melting score, Hengshan Calligraphy Art Center, Taoyuan, 2022. Photo credit: Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts / melting score, Infinitely Ephemeral: Contemporary Women’s Arts, NCKU Art Center, Tainan, 2021