Player Pianos
Bryony Roberts
Tan Dun?s exhibition Visual Music at the Shanghai Gallery of Art is a sprawling, clamoring multi-media installation that defies categorization. Tan Dun is skilled at evading labels, but most people know him as one of the most successful contemporary Chinese composers. Raised in a rural town in the Hunan province and condemned to working in rice fields during the Cultural Revolution, Tan Dun emerged as a leader of the Chinese New Wave movement in music and the arts. After composing dozens of avant-garde symphonies, operas and concertos, he wrote the Academy-Award winning soundtrack to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Now he is trying his hand at visual art.
This is not as dramatic a departure from his previous work as it might seem. From the beginning, Tan Dun has used unusual objects as instruments and has recently incorporated video into his work. Tan Dun?s Organic Music, which premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2005, includes a Paper Concerto for Paper Instruments and a Water Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra. Even Tan Dun?s more conventional compositions for orchestras and operas have their own kind of playfulness and daring. His classical music is celebrated for its integration of Western avant-garde composition and indigenous Chinese music. He states his goal as breaking down the boundaries "between classical and non-classical, East and West, avant-garde and indigenous art forms."
So what did Tan Dun create when given the opportunity to make visual art? Not surprisingly, an installation that is stronger aurally than it is visually. Nonetheless, Visual Music has a wonderful, compelling energy. The leitmotif of this exhibition is the deconstructed piano, which appears in various forms. One is imbedded in the wall at the entrance; others are disassembled in varying degrees and scattered throughout the space. Most of the pianos are controlled by a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) system, designed by Tan Dun, which enables them to play aggressive and atonal ?melodies? on their own. When standing in this cavernous, black-painted gallery, one is surrounded by pianos with their shells ripped off that appear to be played by invisible musicians. This provides the backdrop for the five ?scenes? or ?movements? that make up the exhibition, much like the movements of a symphony.
The first ?movement,? a piano imbedded in the entrance wall, establishes the trope. After entering the hall, one sees the second movement: concentric rings of piano parts on the floor. Multiple pianos have been dismantled down to each key, and the pieces have been arranged in rings, one for each part. The ring of standing hammer shanks looks at first glance like a circle of bones, adding to the ritualistic feeling of the piece. The third movement is a conical pile of piano parts sitting in front of three video projections that show Tan Dun destroying the pianos, creating the pile of parts and playing classical music on a half-deconstructed piano. Around the corner, in an atrium space with a mirrored floor, is the fourth scene, a continuation of Tan Dun?s Organic Music project. A long narrow screen shows a projection of a man slapping clear bowls of water, transforming them into percussion instruments. In reaction to his playing, a deconstructed piano next to the projection blurts out discordant sounds. On the other side of the wall from this piece is the fifth movement, a duet between a videotaped Tan Dun playing the piano and a digitally controlled piano next to the projection screen. Digital technology can simulate the presence of his fingers on the keyboard. The piano is physically in the gallery but the player is not, creating a haunting absence that feels more real than the videotaped performance.
Nearly all of these ?movements? generate sound?the exhibition is aurally overwhelming, but never a cacophony. There is a moment for each sound. Sculptures respond to each other in scripted dialogue. The real and the recorded, the animate and the inanimate appear to communicate. The automated pianos seem anthropomorphic; not only do they speak, they respond, they move on their own, they suggest the invisible presence of a human player.
To focus on the calculated eeriness of this exhibition, however, is to ignore its aggressive tone. In some ways this show resembles work from the 1960s; it presents destruction and noisemaking as a path to liberation. The difference is that the moments of real aggression are all recorded and re-presented to us through controlled media. This is appropriate for a follower, but not a contemporary, of avant-garde figures such as John Cage who rose to fame in the 1960s. Cited as one of Tan Dun?s greatest influences, Cage was the original leveler of musical traditions. Before Tan Dun was even born, Cage had experimented with unconventional instruments, created the "prepared piano," and incorporated Eastern philosophies into Western musical composition. Although Tan Dun is heavily indebted to Cage, he does have a different agenda. The indigenous sounds, instruments and shamanistic rituals of rural China are inspirations for him and guide his music more than the impulse to annihilate tradition.
The work in Visual Music does not comfortably fall within the category of contemporary New Media art. True, Tan Dun is integrating sound, video and sculpture but the pieces do not have the same level of interactivity or of technological advancement as much New Media work. Rather than an intricate connection between viewer, audio and imagery, Tan Dun offers a relatively static arrangement of instruments that are playing a preconceived composition. This old-fashioned style is part of the charm of Visual Music, but it does leave one wondering if the visual elements were developed as much as they could have been. The appearance of the pianos, the quality of the videos, the arrangement of the piano parts and the spatial relation between video projections and sculptures tend towards the obvious. Rather than the aesthetic properties of the objects, however, it is the combination of aural, spatial and performative elements that make the installation compelling. Tan Dun?s lack of inhibition in trying new media and his exuberant playfulness with materials is refreshing and liberating.
