Frame III       
0.047’’ music wire, foam board, soil, cast handmade paper in found paper materials, interactive sound generated in Pure Data and controlled by Arduino

Frame III is a collaboration with dancer Yixiao Wang. It parallels the urban tree to the metropolitan type of individuality in Georg Simmel’s “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” as both are isolated in a confined space. This installation is an attempt to fulfill the desire to project the feelings of an urban tree onto a human body, and vice versa. The paper castings are made from bricks that construct the frame of an urban tree, and four sensors placed underneath that respond to Yixiao’s body movement.  These four sensors generate synthetic sounds, and manipulate sound recordings of trees, street noises, and knuckle cracking.

In the process, we imagine ourselves in a street tree’s situation. We set four stages of movement: seeking, unfolding, extending, and struggling. In the performance, Yixiao throws his body in unpremeditated actions, imitating the growth of a tree with the confrontation of external forces. As the movement and the generated sound get more intense, so does the sound of paper brick rustling and crumpling. The progression eventually leads to a state of dynamic equilibrium between the tree and the human body.