Vital Sounding Festival 2021- Recap

The Vital Sounding Festival was an amazing experience for me. It was great to finally perform for people I have known for years in an amazing location.

Maimai was the first performer using vintage sound generators and oscillators usually used for calibrating electronics, was repurposed to create a smooth melancholy tune.

Yinyi was the second performer performing a Max patch with white noise and random piano notes. He was later joined by Maimai and Sunwei each wielding ultra directional speakers creating different perspectives within the space and a movement of an otherwise 2dimensional sound.
Sunwei was next with a simple improvised performance using a recording megaphone, laptop speakers, and a computer fan. Using some or all of these elements to create feedback that would be recorded on the megaphone and repeated as he walked around the audience. With a little movement the characteristic of the feedback could be changed into a completely different experience.
Xiang was next with her physical representation of a sound. Using her body on the floor she translated her composed sound into human movement. It was beautiful, slow and graceful.


Junyi Ciao was next first handing out plastic gloves to everybody in the audience in preparation for his story. He gave instructions to constantly rub the gloves together then clap when cued by the text. Then with his cool, sultry voice began reading a text he wrote. It was a great collective experience. The sound of 100 people rubbing plastic gloves and clapping slowly immersed you into the experience.

Yanjun was next with his innovative equipment setup playing a mixer that was connected to itself creating intentional feedback. This feedback was further manipulated by using what looked like an RF antenna to use his body movements as a way to affect the feedback tone. Great performance.
The next performer was me and I mixed and created feedback recording the audio from the other recorders back to the same recorder. The use of multiple speakers and sequenced surround panning created even more movement with the audio. It was a little loud a little soft. Short and sweet.
The final performer was Xucheng with his story and slideshow and accompanying sound recordings. Telling a story of the past and evoking a nostalgic atmosphere to end the festival.
All in all it was a great experience to be a spectator as well as a performer. Looking forward to shows in the very near future.