ARRAY PRESENTS THE SPIRE CHOIR (2022) – Featuring Xuan Ye
July 8, 2022 @ 6 PM and 8 PM ET
- Live Performance @ Array Space: Pay what you want
- Livestream Online: Free
Co-presented with MOCA
PROGRAM
The Spire Choir is a sound performance involving a human performer and a bio-sensing voicing apparatus that is co-crafted by Xuan Ye and Jason Doell. Performing with and in algorithms, the Spire Choir intersects the acts of vocal improvisation, mindful movement and neurofeedback. The resulting soundscape spires up through multimodal entanglements of sound, mind, body and cognitive technologies. This project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
ABOUT
XUAN YE
Xuan Ye makes multi-sensory publication, installation, and performance through a myriad of poetic and sorcerous technologies, often involving improvisation and computation.
As a musician, Ye is techne agnostic and genre eclectic and has been lauded as “one of Canada’s most exciting voices in textural soma” by OBEY CONVENTION. They have been commissioned by Edmonton Mew Music (2021) and the Canadian Music Centre (2020). They have performed at numerous experimental music festivals and DIY shows. They have shared the stage with Phew, Pharmakon, Chris Corsano, Carl Stone, Xylouris White, Alex Zhang Hungtai, etc. Their live performances and releases have received critical accolades from Bandcamp, Musicworks and Exclaim!.
The artist has been featured and exhibited internationally, including at Venice Architecture Biennale (IT), Centre de Design de l’UQAM à Montréal (CA), Fonderie Darling (CA), Varley Art Gallery (CA), the Art Gallery of Ontario (CA), Inside-out Art Museum (CN), the Goethe-Institut (Beijing & Montreal), ArtAsiaPacific, KUNSTFORUM(GE), among others. They are a recipient of the SSHRC scholarship and a finalist of the 2018 EQ Bank Digital Artists Award.
Xuan Ye @ MOCA
A MULTI-MEDIA INSTALLATION
It Takes Spirals to Feed the Spiral
May 25, 2022 — July 31, 2022
Blurring the physical and the virtual, Toronto-based Chinese artist Xuan Ye presents a new multimedia installation, It Takes Spirals to Feed the Spiral (2021–2022). Through ongoing research into spirals as an archetype, Ye reimagines conceptions of space and time.
The exhibition looks at how spirals repeat themselves in the smallest components of life and the largest forces in our universe; in their practice Ye refers to nanoscopic imagery that reveals the double helix structure in DNA, and telescopes that make visible the spiral formations of galaxies.
Ye intentionally turns forms and concepts inside out. In this space, the immersive vinyl wallpaper constitutes a meta-textual diagram featuring a 3D model of the human cochlea, visually expanding this organ beyond the bounds of the human body. Mapped in an exaggerated scale, the canal of the inner ear mimics the appearance of a cosmic phenomenon, such as a wormhole. Viewers can participate in Ye’s research by scanning the imagery with their smartphone to reveal a layer of augmented reality. This extension of the work taps into various fields and cultures ranging from mathematics to biology and astronomy, and from ancient civilizations to post-colonial cultural movements.
Suspended from the ceiling, is a video essay consisting of generative animations, and sequences that are driven by artificial intelligence algorithms. The moving image presents a journey into a seemingly infinite spiraling realm that is accompanied by an original sound work that blends algorithmic composition produced by Jason Doell with improvised ritualistic sounds and vocalizations performed by the artist.
The public programming scheduled in conjunction with this installation involves working with Array Space to present a live sound performance titled The Spire Choir, and an artist talk at MOCA; dates to be confirmed
Xuan Ye received support from The Canada Council for the Arts to help realize this project.
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