Sound travels: neil rolnick in china
Friday, November 28th, 2008
article in english
我今天上课时无意发现自己出现在Art Electric的杂志文章中，撰文的是今年六月来娱乐节中表演的电子音乐家 Neil Rolnick，这个老好人可能是所有DE-NIGHT表演者中最资深而且最有耐心的一位，展现的音乐形式异常的前卫，和他的外在形象没有任何关系。文章中他提到了年中中国行关於数字娱乐节的表演，我摘录下，对於接下我要做的全球数字娱乐教育资源研究，他将会是个非常重要的联系人和好合作伙伴。
www.arts-electric.org/stories/080818_rolnick.html
August 18, 2008
From late May until late June 2008 I was in China preparing for and performing concerts of my music. While I experienced all the normal frustrations of an American (a New Yorker, no less), I also came away with some interesting insights and questions about the musical and artistic scene I encountered there.
The major projects which bookended my stay were performances of a new piece, The Economic Engine, for 4 traditional Chinese instruments, western string quartet, digital processing and video projection. The piece was commissioned by the China Electronic Music Center at the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) in Beijin.…(This part of the article has been removed)
This performance provided a glimpse into yet another Chinese art world. It was sponsored by another school, the Beijing Fashion Institute of Technology, but not a music conservatory. The artistic director of the festival, Ding Zhao Chen, is a professor in the school’s design department. The first night of the festival included a fashion show of student designed clothes, and was supposed to include a brief performance by Cindy and me, but a huge rain storm washed out our part of the program.
The Festival, including my concert, took place in 798, which gave it a caché of art world credibility which was lacking in the performance at CCOM. And it did feel a bit like loft performances in Soho or Tribeca in the 70s or 80s, but more so. The performance was in what I think was a derelict dormitory for an old factory, up four floors of stairs with broken and chipped tiles on the stairs, an inch of dust and grit on every surface, and clear views into (thankfully) long disused communal bathrooms at each landing. The room itself was a concrete box with a 3-second reverb time. There was a hip-hop DJ in the plaza four stories below while we tried to rehearse all afternoon in 95º heat. The sound system arrived four hours late and the electricity arrived two hours after that via a 200 meter extension cord brought up from where the DJ had been plugged in four floors down. But with all that, when we finally got to show time the hall was packed with about 200 mostly young people who received my musical offerings with great enthusiasm. I can’t imagine that many of them really knew what kind of music they were coming in to hear, but they certainly convinced me by their responses that they were eager to hear new things.
…(The rest of the article has been removed)
