LinZhang: Xuan Xiang Yi Qi
Digital Performance, sound analysis, build with Processing, amplifier speaker, microphone, Tea gongfu machine,Coffee machine, midi machine, light projection, silk frame screens.

Brown University MEME Program, Sonic Psychogeography, CIT building DM Studio, USA.

2009

Xuan Xiang Yi Qi 

by LinZhang 

Xuan Xiang Yi Qi (玄香异气) is a ten-minute digital performance performed inside of a six-foot-square cube made of silk-screens. A video of rising steam is rear-projected on all of the screens. Inside the cube there is a long table on which are placed a kungfu machine, a professional coffee machine, and five cups. The artist/performer is visible in silhouette from the viewers’ perspective outside the cube, and boils water and puts tea and coffee into each machine. As they are prepared, she distributes cups of both liquids to the audience. The sound of the machines is amplified: the coffee machine’s sound is a consistent aggressive gurgle. The tea machine, on the other hand, makes a complex soft sound, not unlike a small stream.  

Xuan Xiang Yi Qi engages the five sensing organs—the eyes, the ears, the tongue, the nose, and the skin—at the same time, provoking something like a synesthetic experience. During the performance, viewers perceive the artist’s movements, while tasting drinks, hearing brewing sounds, smelling pu-erh tea and coffee, and feeling the warmth of the cups in their hands throughout the performance. While coffee and tea may first seem as the stereotypical drinks of the West and the East, in fact today, Starbucks are everywhere in Asia, and Western supermarkets have hundreds of kinds of tea. In other words, our cultural traditions are as exchangeable as our senses. Coffee or tea? It’s just a case of old wine in new bottles.