A work co-created with 钢铁大腿. Cover image photographed by 段立言.
Overview
A feedback piece: one microphone, three effect chains and three loudspeakers (two full-range monitors and a guitar amplifier), with two performers moving in the same space. Feedback is the main material; flute and khoomei are a second material, there to antagonise it and talk back to it. Whichever loudspeaker the microphone comes near gradually dyes the current sound its own colour, and the two performers' positions, movements and sounds overlap: the "edge" is the extent of that overlap.
Motivation
When I made this piece I was in a phase of being intensely fixated on control: I wanted to design the performance system starting from its smallest units, and to control every parameter of the system I had designed. I did this work without having heard any sound, and without any imagined expectation of sound. I designed the filterbank one filter at a time, imagining how I would connect them, how I would calibrate them, how I would use them. I laid out countless systems on ModularGrid and wrote countless ideas in my notes, wanting to build in hardware the enormous, complicated filterbank system I had designed in VCV. In the end I bought fourteen identical filters (seven Mutable Blades) and used an ES-9 interface and Max/MSP to control their cutoff, drive and resonance precisely — computing the base cutoff, offset and bandwidth voltages in Max/MSP, outputting a set of voltages that held the cutoff of every Blades at fully counter-clockwise, combining LP and HP into a band-pass with a variable bandwidth, and then using an A-152 and a Multimod to design two complex, time- and phase-related modulation sources for drive and resonance — assembling it all into one huge effects system run as feedback… and the result was that I had no idea what I was playing.
The same thing was happening in my life: having no control over my own life, I involuntarily made up a lie of being in control through consumption. However I did it, I could never fool myself.
After the performance there was a long time when I was unwilling to look at this work again, and five of the seven Blades were sold.
Where it comes from
The word "edge" comes from what I was thinking about then: the blurred, intermingling edges between things. Before this piece was made, I went to Chongqing to see a woman I liked at the time. She was a classmate from middle school, and one of the reasons I ended up a professional artist; I always thought she was a natural artist. She had no feelings of that kind for me. The day I left Chongqing, the whole world seemed to be made of slime. I was extremely dazed, heavy-headed, and all I could feel was a wish to laugh and a wish to break down. God — everything overlapped and covered everything else, and every edge was blurred. I sank into the concrete, I seeped into the cracks in the asphalt. So I chose to use a microphone and a loudspeaker to complete the last part of this piece.
How it works
The microphone goes first into a mixing desk. From the desk it passes through a Boss Limiter Enhancer, is then split three ways into the effect chains, and the chains' outputs return to the desk, which sends the three post-FX signals on to the loudspeakers.
The first two chains come from one filterbank: seven Mutable Blades, with the odd bands and the even bands each going to their own chain and on to one of the two full-range monitors. The filterbank is controlled by an ES-9 audio interface, Max/MSP on the computer, and modules including a Turing Machine and a Doepfer A-152, which gives it a sense of flow. The third chain is a set of pedals going out through a guitar amplifier, giving the system another colour.
Flute and khoomei enter the same microphone, so the same system tears them apart and sends them back along with the feedback: the two are not layers side by side but push against each other. Once the flute and khoomei come in it is complete chaos — like an explosion, with nothing I could do at the time to pull it back: helplessness, collapse, loss of control, and despair.
That filterbank is no longer in use: five of the seven Blades were sold, so this piece cannot be performed again as it was.
Three loudspeakers, one microphone, routed into three different effect chains, producing different colours. Under the influence of feedback and delay, these changes are slow. When the microphone moves between different loudspeakers, the nearest loudspeaker gradually shifts the current sound toward its own colour.
My contribution
I built the system, wrote the effect chains and played the feedback; 钢铁大腿 was the second performer, improvising on flute and khoomei (throat singing).
Where it has been shown
Trigger, 2025.06.28. The performance video is now on YouTube.
Three loudspeakers, one microphone — the spatial relationships, movements, and sounds produced between the two performers all create their own blurred ranges, and thus blurred edges. Because the venue Trigger is extremely small, we seem to overlap with each other; whether we approach or move apart, we remain overlapping. Our edges are so blurred that I have never found mine. Thank you all. May you all be happy.
Postlude
The notes below are in the order they were written. Where they mention "the previous work", they mean this piece itself: those passages are my own assessment of it, written after the performance. Edge (also Blurred Edge, or Study on Edges) are earlier names for this piece.
If only humans had built the Tower of Babel. If only everyone were happy.
Last night (actually early this morning), I talked with 南美大虾 about compulsive consumption. Especially during the pandemic years, and the years after. I mentioned that when I have no control over my own life, I involuntarily create the illusion of control through consumption.
Today, while chatting with 翁老师, we suddenly touched on this point — on my lack of control over my own life, over my own creative work. As we discussed these topics, various events gradually surfaced in my mind: my previous work, Adorno's book, my discussion with 南美大虾 yesterday, and so on. I have completely forgotten how such a conclusion came about, and I have completely forgotten what I was thinking at the time, but I must quote here a passage from Adorno in Philosophy of New Music:
…because a cowed and intimidated consciousness finds in art that the door through which consciousness hoped to flee total enlightenment is bolted; a fury felt because art today, to the extent to which it has any substantiality, intransigently reflects and forces on the mind all that it would like to forget.
— Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), Introduction, p. 14〔excerpt: the main clause of the sentence is not quoted〕
…weil das verängstigte Bewußtsein in der neuen Kunst die Pforte verriegelt findet, durch welche es der totalen Aufklärung zu entfliehen hoffte: weil Kunst heute, wofern ihr überhaupt Substantialität zukommt, ohne Konzession all das reflektiert und zum Bewußtsein bringt, was man vergessen möchte.
— Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik (Einleitung, S. 20)
I'm very sorry that I haven't yet presented my conclusion. However, my conclusion is: my previous work, which had deeply disappointed me, was actually quite good. Even though I didn't think so before.
The previous work had been named Edge, or Blurred Edge, or Study on Edges, or something like that. I believed at the time that the beauty in art and life — what in art is often called tension, what in life is called happiness — stems from the blurred and intermingling edges between things. But my work itself was so blurred that I completely lost control of it, so much so that during the performance, I felt hysterical despair. This is also why, despite it being a work from long ago, I never uploaded it: because I was terrified.
It's only at this point that I can truly state my more important conclusion: my life has been terrified by this loss of control, and in my own artistic creation, I realised the door of escape was locked, so I wished to flee from my own work, my own creation, my own thinking — to escape total enlightenment. But in reality, losing control, having no control over anything, is my current life, and I believe it is a microcosm, a facet of contemporary life.
When chatting with 翁老师, we first mentioned control — how the desire to control everything drives humans to imagine and crave power, how it controls humans to create narratives, to consume, to live. But these behaviours are actually fleeing from a truth: that we no longer have any control over our own lives.
I mentioned that I envy a kind of person — those who seem never to have reflected on their true needs; they seem to know their needs more clearly than I do and have the ability to directly obtain them. I don't know whether this fictional group exists, but I used to be like this: I used equipment to control sound as much as possible, to gain the strongest possible control, without even realizing it. So when my work spiraled out of control, I felt dizzy, felt my indisputable failure.
But, as I said: this work is actually quite good.
"Mom, what about those people without talent? What happens to their lives?"
We have all become failures — even if not yet, we will be in the future. What do we do?
2025.10.09
This essay seems so chaotic that I need to write another one to explain it.
I believe I have realised one of the most painful aspects of contemporary society: our complete lack of control over our lives.
The previous work was one in which I completely lost control during performance, and in creating that previous work, I made enormous efforts to achieve total control: I purchased 14 filters, used an audio interface and a computer to control their Cutoff, and used various methods to precisely control their Drive and Resonance — for this I expended a great deal of time, energy, and money.
And the result was: I had absolutely no idea what I was playing.
It's so funny, but it's also very good. At the time I was truly devastated, and it went on for a very long while.
Until today when I realised: having the desire to control everything but lacking the ability to control anything — this is me, and possibly a norm of contemporary society, and also the source of suffering.
Seen from another angle, the work is this: I tried everything I had, and ended up like someone lying on the ground, holding himself, unable to control even his own body.
Thank you all, thank you all for reading my work and my essay, and thank you all for your very existence, thank you all for every effort in your lives. You've all worked so hard. Humans can actually dig fifty meters downward — we all still have tomorrow.
2025.10.09
This is the original concept from some unknown early time.
What is my edge? My skin? The sounds I make? The impact I have on this world? We are all like a blob of sticky slime, floating in the air, sticking to one another.
The edges of everything are blurred.
钢铁大腿 was invited to participate in the performance: he will inject his own colour into this sound system.
2025.10.09
I'm growing more and more fond of this work. I've been learning about Lacanian psychoanalysis lately, and also read Noise and Capitalism. I won't go into details — honestly, my current state of mind doesn't leave me with much to say. Anyway, I wish everyone well.
2026.06.24
Oh, and happy birthday to me.
2026.06.24