Five Elements

I designed an audio/sound installation to express the philosophy idea of Chinese Five-Elements (Wuxing): the universe consists of five elements (gold, wood, water, fire, and earth), and they mutually reinforce and neutralize each other to reach the state of balance.

The sound installation consists of a lamp, an integrated circuit plate, and a laptop running a Max/MSP/Jitter patch. When touching the ball, the player and touch points generate a closed circuit, which conducts microcurrent to the integrated circuit plate. The microcurrent is then transformed into digital data and is sent to Max/MSP through the USB port. Sound clips are prepared and triggered by the Max/MSP patch.

When a player touches one point on the ball’s surface, it will make a sound through the speakers, which represents that element’s texture. Meanwhile, the picture of the element will also show on the projection screen in the real time. It also contains the sound effects like delay, reverb, erosion, etc.