A Song of Valediction:
Dreaming I Roamed on TianMu Mountain
Immersive interactive installationCollaborate with Cy Xu
My role: illustrator, programmer, art director
Introduction
This installation is inspired by the famous poem of the same name, an ancient Chinese poem about the poet – Bai Li’s – dream of a wonderland.
Through “immersive space,” we reconstructed the bizarre experience that occurred on TianMu mountain. Like mirrors that reflect people’s shapes in different scales, we created 3 different scenes that merge the man- and the dream-world.
The work features traditional Chinese aesthetics, and helps users visualize the poem and the unconscious dream experience through human motion interaction.
Concept
The vacant mind still contains details of its surroundings. So now, the world is colored by the human mind and spirit. —-Baihua Zong
Bai Li’s original poem has always been my favorite from the ancient period. From the first time I read it, a bizarre collage of a wonderland emerged in my mind’s eye. Thus, in my first year of college, I drew a series of illustrations based on this work. Three years later, I sought another way to reconstruct not only the scene but also the experience of the poet in his dream about TianMu mountain.
Development
Inspired by ancient bronze mirrors, we focused on re-inventing the illusive experience of dreaming – i.e., where people get lost in the unconscious.
By incorporating frequently-changing surroundings and bonding with reflections of figures, the people in the “dream” will, undoubtedly, lose their sense of time and space.
Close Shot- Lost
Myriad peaks and more valleys and nowhere a road. Flowers lure me, rocks ease me. Day suddenly ends.
Growing from viewer’s hands, flowers thrive and wither with human motion.
Midium Shot- Falling
The stone gate breaks asunder Venting in the pit of heaven, An impenetrable shadow.
Now the sun and moon illumine a gold and silver terrace, And, clad in rainbow garments, riding on the wind,
Come the queens of all the clouds, descending one by one.
The human becomes the rotating flower, falling into the heavens surrounded by fairies, flowers, and phoenixes rising from the ashes.
Long Shot- Climbing
I wear his pegged boots Up a ladder of blue clouds,
Sunny ocean half-way,
Holy cock-crow in space,
Chasing by the birds, viewer’s figures rise and disappear among the changing mountains.