https://kennyzhao.com Kenny's Room Mon, 25 May 2026 04:55:13 +0000 https://kennyzhao.com en https://kennyzhao.com/Desktop Thu, 09 Apr 2020 18:55:31 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/Desktop <img width="1082" height="1080" width_o="1082" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e1a96751bc75799df560728688e507579c34d8904dc8703da4ce9910f44370c3/Screenshot-2020-04-09-13.11.34.png" data-mid="66354696" border="0" alt="Dublab - Mirror Talk w/ Def Sound" data-caption="Dublab - Mirror Talk w/ Def Sound" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e1a96751bc75799df560728688e507579c34d8904dc8703da4ce9910f44370c3/Screenshot-2020-04-09-13.11.34.png" /> <img width="3308" height="1944" width_o="3308" height_o="1944" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ee38243bfa008c119105159a1fd8350bd2bc0cdcf33eba382cd5704fee540736/kr_titlecutout.png" data-mid="80837719" border="0" data-draggable alt="Kenny's Room" data-caption="Kenny's Room" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ee38243bfa008c119105159a1fd8350bd2bc0cdcf33eba382cd5704fee540736/kr_titlecutout.png" /> <img width="400" height="316" width_o="400" height_o="316" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0a82ac8c73f3d128ceacec339b609eabe15603cbf139fe508b2ac9fe8f33b4ef/recollection-icon.png" data-mid="74295127" border="0" data-draggable alt="reCOLLECTION" data-caption="reCOLLECTION" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/400/i/0a82ac8c73f3d128ceacec339b609eabe15603cbf139fe508b2ac9fe8f33b4ef/recollection-icon.png" /> <img width="1024" height="1024" width_o="1024" height_o="1024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3699d2b7284bb007d2ab15541ab20668a07fc39482db403c5942d6c8b7e6d7c2/pdf.png" data-mid="66343103" border="0" data-draggable alt="Shimmer - When All You Know is Being Trashed.pdf" data-caption="Shimmer - When All You Know is Being Trashed.pdf" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3699d2b7284bb007d2ab15541ab20668a07fc39482db403c5942d6c8b7e6d7c2/pdf.png" /> <img width="600" height="600" width_o="600" height_o="600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/02cdd678967be8939c9efc7895a9320b478764ba5739186122742125721d4529/20.-Watching.jpg" data-mid="163836592" border="0" data-draggable alt="iChing at the Audubon Center (12.17)" data-caption="iChing at the Audubon Center (12.17)" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/600/i/02cdd678967be8939c9efc7895a9320b478764ba5739186122742125721d4529/20.-Watching.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="1000" width_o="1000" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/eebc9276b74688943391a1d626cb7618ead8c5b956e1a37916eedab5b128e27c/ER_Icon_Book_Golden_Order_Principia.png" data-mid="163884134" border="0" alt="Book Reports" data-caption="Book Reports" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/eebc9276b74688943391a1d626cb7618ead8c5b956e1a37916eedab5b128e27c/ER_Icon_Book_Golden_Order_Principia.png" /> <img width="322" height="322" width_o="322" height_o="322" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bcbcb1f683957b079b142adaae03889f647c62bc50e2179b72071c880a3e58be/Screen-Shot-2022-07-17-at-8.50.31-PM.jpg" data-mid="148087373" border="0" alt="Music for Daydreaming" data-caption="Music for Daydreaming" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/322/i/bcbcb1f683957b079b142adaae03889f647c62bc50e2179b72071c880a3e58be/Screen-Shot-2022-07-17-at-8.50.31-PM.jpg" /> <img width="1818" height="1818" width_o="1818" height_o="1818" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d1bea8dec7fb9bcc8fcd93e6b8e49e52211d293fd2f3b840e5d091de584cca97/IMG_1522.jpg" data-mid="66566412" border="0" alt="Opt Out of Spectrum's Mailing List Bullshit" data-caption="Opt Out of Spectrum's Mailing List Bullshit" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d1bea8dec7fb9bcc8fcd93e6b8e49e52211d293fd2f3b840e5d091de584cca97/IMG_1522.jpg" /> <img width="800" height="648" width_o="800" height_o="648" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/98dbb9064f4684fbc3feac6b8a5204d0f7396641a5b715e85d53ce3a8989e0db/folder.png" data-mid="66343093" border="0" alt="disneyland" data-caption="disneyland" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/800/i/98dbb9064f4684fbc3feac6b8a5204d0f7396641a5b715e85d53ce3a8989e0db/folder.png" /> <img width="256" height="256" width_o="256" height_o="256" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7e3f632b2eba6ed2655861ffe11a6298608d0d588765d81305685cdabe91070a/divine-confetti.png" data-mid="74292603" border="0" data-no-zoom="true" alt="APAHM" data-caption="APAHM" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/256/i/7e3f632b2eba6ed2655861ffe11a6298608d0d588765d81305685cdabe91070a/divine-confetti.png" /> <img width="960" height="620" width_o="960" height_o="620" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b3d44b275a26d9613872bec2227fb40f5b6bbda37f62d33eaa0139b39c56953a/pngguru.com.png" data-mid="66786728" border="0" alt="Guest Book" data-caption="Guest Book" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/960/i/b3d44b275a26d9613872bec2227fb40f5b6bbda37f62d33eaa0139b39c56953a/pngguru.com.png" /> <img width="2193" height="3302" width_o="2193" height_o="3302" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/eeca64cadeaf7ae3d170d3542ac2ea609c4bc94a846f272193976284f41c518c/Window.png" data-mid="155799692" border="0" data-no-zoom="true" data-draggable src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/eeca64cadeaf7ae3d170d3542ac2ea609c4bc94a846f272193976284f41c518c/Window.png" /> <img width="352" height="480" width_o="352" height_o="480" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cf992b86fc8e7fb0e6adb328bb27042610949e00f82da1eebe618492b2c07b1c/52._Keeping_Still.gif" data-mid="202810514" border="0" alt="iChing" data-caption="iChing" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/352/i/cf992b86fc8e7fb0e6adb328bb27042610949e00f82da1eebe618492b2c07b1c/52._Keeping_Still.gif" /> https://kennyzhao.com/Thoughts-Nu Sat, 11 Apr 2020 19:55:02 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/Thoughts-Nu ༺ ˖࣪ ∗ ਏਓ ∗ ˖࣪ ༻10.13.2 -- It’s the night before release day. I’m photoshopping the ace of pentacles from Jodorowsky’s Marseilles deck into a cursor for this website, which nobody will probably see. I’d much rather hear what other people think of the music now, than come up with more things to say. But as usual there is still so much to synthesize...for my own sake as much as anyone else. 7.19.22 -- What a zone it’s been! Really a confluence of zones...a foam of bubbles. And each of us somewhere in the middle. I’m reminded of something Bayo Akomolafe said once (as usual) - “May we meet in that precious middle.” Easier said than done, when each of us has a different vantage point! From what I can see, my own middle tends to be a bit “middler” than most of the people around, on account of the wide variety of folks I choose to spend time with. Still, lately I’ve found myself wishing for solitude again...the kind that allowed for the easy creation of a mixtape and a drone album, and this website. I can do a lot with solitude, and at the moment I’m finding myself hopelessly entangled. And as I worked out the visual elements of my upcoming album, I came back to this website and thought about the forces that have kept me away...a particular configuration that privileges the “real world” and draws a line between what’s in here and out there. Out there, our devices are tools designed to make life easier. Or else a substitute for something better, when the real thing is unavailable. Or else a refuge, from a world outside our control. I remember sometime during quarantine...I can’t remember who said this, but someone recommended lowering the brightness on your computer, so that the screen could sit in your field of view more evenly with everything else outside of it. I still think about that every once in a while, this simple act whose intention is to even out the hierarchy of stimuli. More things become possible, as my gaze drifts from these bright letters onscreen, to all the multicolored fabrics in my closet, the sun coming in the window, and the half-unpacked suitcases on the floor. My cats play-lighting...it’s all happening the same sequence of attention. I’m remembering now that the reason we said yes to so many recent friend hangs and gatherings arose partly from a renewed commitment to Donna Haraway’s call to “stay with the trouble,” particularly following quarantine. To identify with a certain kind of modern human experience, via personal participation. I can hear the chorus of voices telling me my personal life experience is already indicative of the modern experience, simply by existing. I get your point, oh faceless imaginary visitor. But this is the middle according to my own, incommunicable personal logic. Besides, another element of this is my desire to meet my own threshold of relating to others. And while it can be challenging (even exhausting), I do genuinely enjoy relating from one group to another, much as I like moving from one creative project to the next. I sometimes lose myself in the process, but I also find myself in the multitude. It feels like I’m doing a research project - meeting my personal limits of safety and need to go out and gather bits of information. I can write freely in the 1st person here...this isn’t about objectivity. It’s about gathering a different kind of personal data, and drawing conclusions that are just better questions.As we travel at volatile speeds in different directions, I think we need new bibles. Not the dogmatic kind, but the kind written in our own language. Not just the written word, but using the building blocks of our time - the routine, the UX, the infinite scroll. Not just the kind of thing you read on a placard, but the kind of thing you feel in your bones just by receiving it...whose very presence draws our attention to the present and our place in it. https://kennyzhao.com/Thoughts-OG Tue, 19 Jul 2022 21:12:28 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/Thoughts-OG &gt;&gt;&gt; 2021 &lt;&lt;&lt; (づ◡﹏◡)づ 2.22.21 -- day 346. light rustling from the cats brings on my first waking moments. awareness spreads from a vague location in my body, until I notice my eyes have been wide open. sun salutation, afterwards I sit on the couch trying to recall in reverse the last week of faces/voices I’ve encountered. They come back out of order, but the experience reminds me to make more cards, and to remember my latest mantra: “who’s it for?” coffee + a chocolate chip pumpkin muffin from SJ. work call with mom and dad, we disconnect before things get too personal, then pangs of guilt. I email my zoom aerobics instructor about payment options, read a Ta Nehisi Coates’s article Kanye for Sunday Book Club, before following a FKA Twigs’s IGTV workout video on my phone. at lunch I rewatch the birthday video SJ made from clips of my friends sharing their favorite memories of us. I process some beats on the Octatrack and make opaque plans to stream tomorrow afternoon. a check-in with the Virtual Care Lab discord reminds me I still need to catch up with some prompts there, one of which was Aden’s question from yesterday’s Lab Hour, “what would you like to know?” my response - “how do I know if I’m doing enough?”&nbsp;~ Rituals this week:movement - FKA Twigs’s warmups on IGTV. Tai Chi, w/ Master Yang (on Prime) lunch reading * Feminist, Queer, Crip, Alison Kafer * “I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye,” Ta-Nehisi Coates * Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake (audiobook) bedtime stories * The Farthest Shore, Ursula Le Guin * The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang 2.11.21 -- How’s year 2 been for you? Over here it’s felt like flipping between epiphanies and boredom, absorbing in small doses just how much of a marathon of stillness this is. Feels like I’m in an unevenly made Tarkovsky film, made to reckon with the philosophical implications of inherent human truths writ large (and very few special effects). I miss that buzz of activity that allowed me to wake up some days and think, “my, how the time has passed!” - the same buzz that made it easy for us to lose track of each other...but these are new times, and we’re all lost in them. It’s been hard to accept that change is not a destination. I keep telling myself this, and yet I still find myself on imaginary, self-made summits, waking up days, hours later to find the choice is once again mine to make. Stories can help me remember what I care about, but it’s been a year of bibliographies. I think I need a hike ⛰ 2.1.21 --How many collaborative ongoing spaces do I have the bandwidth for? Creating my own spaces is a way of maintaining my position of control over my own education. What am I not learning, by choosing not to be entangled?Ongoingness is not a concept in itself - it modifies a concept. With what are we choosing to go on? Everyone has a different answer. An invitation to an ongoing experience is frightening because it means different things to different people... Ongoingness is what I carry with myself from one project to another, one missed connection to another. It is not necessarily the project itself (unless the goal of the project is to find ones’ way to a relationship with ongoingness). Ongoingness is not the destination, it’s the path, the way. And what marks this path? What are the characteristics of the projects that form these connecting dots? If the goal is entanglement and deep collaboration, if the goal is friendship, then the projects have to be small (small is all). Friendships will outlast projects. If there are more projects later, there can be further invitations to “go on.” But this model allows someone to consent to going on, while also giving them an opportunity to move at their pace. Ongoingness queers the human experience of time. I was friends with Andrew as a freshman in college, and we had about 8 years of time apart before becoming closer than ever before in LA. Ongoingness is bigger than my everyday desire to feel connected. It seems faith plays a part, even. 8.9.20 --I want to admit that as tech-savvy as I may be, I am not always 100% there. It is still easy to get only a fraction of me thru text, IG, FB, etc. I get very focused on things, and then just kind of do this general, schedule-meets-life, improv-type deal and then days later will be like .......... o shit.......... oooooo shit no0o0o who knows how many friendships are already subtly tarnished by this past (or repeated) unacknowledged transgression? 6.21.20 -- Communing with digital devices is an act of channeling one’s physical self toward a broadcasted form of attention. It takes its toll on our physical forms - an energy transfer. What do we receive in return? What constitutes nutrients in the binary soil? Where do our roots extend, what nourishment do they exchange in the mycelial network? 5.31.20 --This week I was reminded of the pain of others around me - their frustration, and anger - and I feel the tug to join in aggressive action. But I’m also reluctant to give up the path I’ve already been on, looking for connection in other ways. In places of privilege, how can I show up in ways that others need - while also honoring my own ongoing personal journey? It’s been hard to focus. There is urgency in the air that seems to call for decisive action. I’m reminded of an article I read last month, whose words have been haunting me ever since: “These are ways in which, as things start to slip down that death road, other things start going too. Relationships unravel, mutualities falter, dependence becomes a peril rather than a blessing, and whole worlds of knowledge and practice diminish.” (Deborah Bird Rose) It seems to me that there is a very real need to preserve rituals celebrating love and compassion, sharing dreams - which I understand can read externally as inaction. The world continues to orient itself as a tug of war, a world where if you’re not pulling your weight you’re dead weight. My present situation gives me the freedom to choose how I look at the problem. For others that is a luxury they cannot afford, or have been denied altogether.&nbsp; 5.17.20 -- Finding myself refreshingly disconnected from some of the forces that used to influence my decisions - words like branding, marketability, success. I feel less like I’m competing. It’s not that those feelings disappeared altogether; maybe more-so that my real needs are higher on the list than usual. The fears too, of sustainability, have not vanished, but taken on different shapes. Whether people can care about me enough to support my work - that problem has just become more digitized than it was before quarantine. I do feel different though. I feel like in searching online for connection, I’m taking on responsibility for relationships I originally assumed could be sustained without my attention.&nbsp; I’ve been comparing artists to superheroes a lot in my mind, over the past week. Which feels silly, but conceptually I feel like the only difference is that superhuman feats are meant to look good on paper. The best part about those stories though, was the stories of people navigating responsibility and the eccentricity of their experience. Understanding what made them want to help people in the first place. There’s certainly part of my comparison that also has to do with wanting to feel special, and recognized. Everyone deserves to feel that way. 5.15.20 -- I’ve been feeling more valuable, more important than I did before quarantine. Feels nice to be comparing myself less to other people than usual. 5.14.20 --I think the biggest determinant of my satisfaction in a day is connected to my awareness of the passage of time. Whether I’m doing something enjoyable or not, losing track of time is a disappointing feeling. 5.2.20 --- other things than screens 4.15.20 --- What is the least I can do, and still be full?What fills me? What if I wait, what fills me then? What is a “full day?” - Gwendolyn Brooks, “Prisoners” - Dori Midnight, “Wash Your Hands” 4.14.20 --- What’s the least I can do? 4.13.20 --- Steps for staying curious: - no more routines. Instead, opportunities to ask yourself, “do I wanna do this?” - it’s not enough to think about it and decide not to. You have to do the task enough to be focused on it and answer honestly. - maybe one day I try, I’m like “nope.” Then I can do other shit. - don’t use time, except as a reminder to take a break and check back in. “Do I still wanna do this?”As long as there are socially agreed-upon beginnings, why not find personal ways to use them as such? - 1st Monday of the month: write out a plan - every monday: check in with the monthly plan - every hour: check in with the current activity. Checking in is not a productivity hack. It is a practice of cultivating an honest relationship with the self. 4.12.20--- Caught myself trying to find solutions again. Solutions are great once you’d identified a problem - and they can be very distracting otherwise. Even if a problem is identified, the solution may be inadequate if other concerns lie outside of the identified problem - which is very much the case we are in. Creativity is helping these days, I think because creativity is a problem-solving mechanism in which I have control. My song will not save the planet - that much is clear. But it does answer a number of recurring questions. Questions like “What do I like?” “What do my friends like?” “What am I thinking?” It also helps because it is a vehicle for staying in the present without being overwhelmed by the present. 4.11.20 ---- Made this page. I found that conch shell thumbnail on Chairish. Jesus, that name. Anyhow, pretty impressed they were using a .png with a transparent background. Like, do they go into photoshop and neatly crop out every product they have? I wonder how many YouTubes are just autoplaying idly without watchers. I wonder how much revenue is being generated from royalties, just passively slipping from one bank account to another, without a care. https://kennyzhao.com/Contact-Page Sat, 07 Jan 2023 01:55:12 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/Contact-Page e: zhaokennyzhao@gmail.com https://kennyzhao.com/iChing-Links Mon, 25 May 2026 04:55:13 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/iChing-Links I Ching Blog Next Show: SAT 6/20, 12-3p at The Audubon Center The I Ching Ensemble is composed of Kenny Zhao (@zhaomusic), Young Tseng (@youngtseng.work), &amp; angel lin (@angellinsounds).This is Kenny’s blog about the I Ching. https://kennyzhao.com/iChing-Blog Mon, 27 Feb 2023 20:26:21 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/iChing-Blog go to intro &gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;5.24.26: Water &amp; Power Residency-- Two years since my last post, wow! Since I last checked in, my I Ching practice has expanded to include two regular collaborators and friends—movement artist Young Tseng and percussionist angel lin. We’ve been playing shows semi-regularly around LA—notably, SoundPedro in San Pedro, 2220 Arts &amp; Archives, and the Hungry Ghost Festival in Chinatown (was one of our favorites!). We’ve been calling it the I Ching Ensemble. Last month, we hosted a residency at LA experimental art space Water &amp; Power. We met up twice a week from 11a-3p (though it ended up being closer to 10a-4p), and during that time we opened the space for visitors, taught them about the I Ching, rehearsed and discussed readings, and planned the rest of the month’s activities. Alongside these “open labs” we also hosted an I Ching workshop midway through, and a final culminating performance. Throughout the residency we completed a total of 18 readings. When we began the residency, I had a lot of plans for exploring audience participation——getting people to add bits of text or artwork alongside our live performance. But as visitors began to arrive, it was clear that most people would need a better introduction to this ancient system before they could feel at all comfortable to participate themselves. Thankfully (and probably thanks to the I Ching) we remained flexible enough to adapt the space accordingly. The Open Labs became a site for teaching visitors to do their first readings, and we worked to create signs and worksheets to help them along. By the end of the residency, I had a new appreciation for what “involvement” can look like, and how different artistic formats call for different kinds of participation. When it comes to an experimental multimedia performance, showing up tends to already be a pretty active experience——people’s expectations and attention are already different than they would be at a more traditional show, and we can honor that by focusing on we do as performers, and allowing their attention to be a sufficient baseline of involvement. In hindsight, I also wonder whether my desire for additional audience participation came from personal insecurity, and a desire to have some kind of built-in feedback. As it turned out with our final show, I had no trouble believing that both audience and performers had a fulfilling experience——in fact, I think everyone could feel the energy in the room as we wrapped up for the evening. <img width="3590" height="2693" width_o="3590" height_o="2693" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c8e684a1ca63071dc7a67b8f1b07af4713e1ae1a55406b1f01b6f6fb7e24a33c/IMG_6204.JPG" data-mid="248704515" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c8e684a1ca63071dc7a67b8f1b07af4713e1ae1a55406b1f01b6f6fb7e24a33c/IMG_6204.JPG" /> 4.14: Web Portal Links--Here’s a list of useful links I’ve collected over the years relating to the I Ching. We had these available via QR code during our recent Water &amp; Power Residency &gt;&gt;&gt; Calling Crane in the Shade - This site taught me how to do my first readings, and how to formulate questions as well. &gt;&gt;&gt; I Ching on Yellowbridge - This website also has translations of the Tao Te Ching, and a built-in dictionary. My brother and I stumbled upon this website during COVID lockdown, and each week we would read chapters from the Tao Te Ching, using Yellowbridge to translate the confusing and often obsolete Chinese characters. I recommend checking it out on a computer, because you can hover over and click individual characters to get additional information. My favorite feature is the “etymology” tab in the character popup windows. At times the explanations seem a bit of a stretch, but early on they inspired me to make my own stories about the characters. &gt;&gt;&gt; Hanziyuan - This website allows you to look up individual characters and find examples of how those characters used to look, across China’s vast history and geography. I used this site extensively when designing my own ideograms in my I Ching practice. The sidebar sometimes also includes etymological speculations &gt;&gt;&gt; De Korne’s Gnostic Book of Changes - This online resource allows you to look up the hexagrams by number and compare various English translations. The author also provides his own input, and tends to lean Jungian in his interpretations. If you have time, I recommend checking out the initial chapters (from the dropdown menu). This helps understand De Korne’s perspective on the I Ching and his motivations for creating this resource. &gt;&gt;&gt; BONUS: Oracle Bone Examples, Museum of the Institute of History and Philosophy in Taipei - This page contains photos and information about the oracle bones that preceded formalized I Ching practice. The characters were inscribed on turtle and ox bones for divinatory purposes, and they represent the earliest records of Chinese language! 8.19.24 - Taipei Performance and Preparation --This past month I had the chance to perform at Taipei’s Contemporary Culture Lab, hosted by a local ambient synth community called Silence Touch. It was my first time performing the musical I Ching outside the country, and I would be performing solo for the first time in a while, so I took the opportunity to explore some new approaches. I knew it would be too cumbersome to bring my 61-key Summit, so I decided to bring the OP-1 for its portability. The OP-1 is a tiny but powerful instrument with an onboard 4-track recorder and looper. It has 8 accessible preset slots - perfect for representing each of the eight trigrams! I arranged them in the same order as they typically appear on the hexagram grid, and named them each after the elements in the I Ching. I also added in a new approach to Octatrack looping that I developed for a beat set at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center - playing back irregular loop lengths &amp; manipulating their start points mid-performance. This approach has a tendency to add texture and chaos to a performance, since the unpredictable start and end points have a tendency to pop. During our stay, my brother and I attended a talk at C-Lab, on the role of AI in artmaking. This talk was less about the popular imitative forms of AI art like midjourney, more about AI as a way of logging and reworking data in unexpected and inspiring ways. One of the speakers talked about how he worked with fashion designers’ moodboards to generate data, and created what he called “trend forecasting” from the results. It made me think of possible connections between esoteric writing, divination, and AI, in that these are all technologies that imitate intelligence by interfacing with the creativity and imagination of their users, moving our hearts and minds to shape reality. In the days leading up to the performance, I developed a routine of running about two readings a day, recording them into Ableton, and taking notes while listening back. Then I would share these notes with ChatGPT, and talk through my ideas about the upcoming performance. I was impressed that it not only knew the hexagrams, but would also suggest ways that the readings reflected the circumstances around my preparation for the show. Taipei Workshop + Performance The Silence Touch event was actually split into two halves - a hands-on workshop from 2-5pm and a show at 6pm. During the workshop we split into groups of four, and shared our setup with the participants. Then each group would perform a short piece together. I was really pleased find a lot of enthusiasm for the I Ching! It seems many people in Taiwan have at least some background knowledge on the I Ching, or else can grasp the creative relationship I’m cultivating with the characters. It was also quite satisfying to see how easy it was for newcomers to grasp what I’m trying to do and get involved themselves.<img width="8192" height="5464" width_o="8192" height_o="5464" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f86c57854ccfa1f33b2884aed6ac3a3b0730f9cb9eb7f2fd889a650084b3ca48/WU5_8379.jpg" data-mid="219982100" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f86c57854ccfa1f33b2884aed6ac3a3b0730f9cb9eb7f2fd889a650084b3ca48/WU5_8379.jpg" /> The solo show also went quite well! We were indoors, in a rectangular computer lab space, and the audience was wrapped alongside two walls of the room, so I decided I would pick up my drawing board and slowly present the hexagram around the room after I transcribed it. This would give me some time to think about my first move while also adding a bit of movement, in the absence of my mime friend :) The reading we received was the same one I got twice in a row at the Philosophical Research Society earlier this year - (38) Estrangement / Diversity. Fire rising from a lake. In some ways the OP-1 approach to improvisation felt more straightforward. I built a foundation with the two synths that represented the trigrams present. As this developed I resampled bits of the performance with the Octatrack, and looked for ways to build cohesion among the moving parts. The 2nd half of the performance was a bit of a blur, and I was only able to recall it later, after writing a good bit on the subject. <img width="8192" height="5464" width_o="8192" height_o="5464" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2fa40675ceb429417ce51c179c195fbbb65fb8257ed1a90d0f39a5a6625e7623/WU5_8751.jpg" data-mid="219982101" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2fa40675ceb429417ce51c179c195fbbb65fb8257ed1a90d0f39a5a6625e7623/WU5_8751.jpg" /> Takeaways + Things to Try Looking back on my rehearsal notes and conversations with ChatGPT, I identified a few areas of interest for further exploration - Designing instruments for trigrams. Through the past month of rehearsal and sound design, it's clear that some ideas and elements are easier to communicate than others. I'm going to do a deeper dive into each of the eight trigrams, to identify exactly which aspects are still challenging, and come up with options to express them that are suited to the tools I currently have. Being able to comfortably evoke each of the eight trigrams should be elemental (ha!) to playing the myriad relationships between them. Side note - I’ve been listening to a lot of Celia Hollander during this trip, and I feel she does such a beautiful job accomplishing this. Many of her recent works are inspired by elemental relationships. performing the changing lines and the resulting hexagram. So far I have only communicated and performed the hexagram on its own, but the more readings I've experienced, the more important the changing lines seem to be in regard to the overall message of the hexagrams. Sometimes a hexagram can be quite auspicious, yet the changing line cautions against overreaction. So I'm dabbling with how I could access these additional lines of counsel during a performance. It's one thing to have a cheat sheet with a grid of hexagrams, but adding six lines to each reading in shorthand seems like a lot more information! exploring ways to communicate resolution. Over the past year of performances I've noticed an inclination for the readings to resolve in a musical way, regardless of starting point. At the beginning I conceived of the readings as a bit more of a timeless soundscape, in which listeners could suspend themselves and determine their current situation. Recently I've warmed up to the idea that resolution can give listeners a sense of arrival that hopefully mirrors the act of discovering a sense of place with the present. I also think this arc resonates with the energetic refrain of each hexagram - that with the proper conduct and participation, one can find eventually find harmony. I'd like to formalize this as part of the improvised structure of each reading, and begin exploring additional ways that things like resolution, cohesion, and momentum can be communicated - thru rhythm, resonance, layering, or body language. intentional silence &amp; pauses. I'm having some some discomfort around silence, particularly when performing solo. Another area to explore with more intention. Overall, I came away from this past trip with the sense that there is a version of this performance that can harness and celebrate my skills even more directly. That the clearer I can be about what I'm trying to communicate, the more easily I can develop the techniques to do so. I'm developing a language, a logic that operates on a sensory level. There are no inherently difficult ideas - with the aid of synthesis, sampling, and sequencing, all kinds of sounds should be available during an improvised performance. 5.28.24 - Cheat Sheets--In our studies of the readings and their translations, YT and I are developing reference notes to consult during our performances. Recently we compared notes and discovered wide distinctions in our approaches, which illuminated the differences in our role when performing the I Ching together. This also revealed the folly in attempting to reduce the readings each to a one-word translation, and has helped to justify the significance of translating the I Ching into a performance practice.To start, I am currently developing a series of words that are meant to be outward facing - I plan to transcribe these translations alongside the Chinese ideograms during live performances. These translations are indeed my attempt to reduce the reading to a one-word response. Thankfully, they are also accompanied by the performance, which draws on other elements of each reading. Ideally the true reading will reside somewhere between these offerings, in the imagination of the audience.Take for example, Hexagram 35 - Advance. The word “advance” refers to a piece of advice directed toward the querent. But the details on how to do this are elsewhere. As the musician in charge of setting the scene, I’ve found that this hexagram speaks to me best as the image of a sunrise. This is the image illustrated by the two trigrams - Fire over Earth - as well as its accompanying ideogram. On the other hand, YT finds that words describing movement - how to advance - to be most useful to him. It seems his notes often reflect the portions of the readings that are directed at the reader, and as such he most often represents the querent taking the optimum path. Hopefully between YT’s characterization of the querent, my setting the scene, and the word of advice presented alongside the ideogram, something like a complete message can be beamed to the imagination of an audience. 5.15.24 - Jung and the I Ching-- I met a new friend and fellow I Ching practitioner, who shared a wealth of knowledge and resources relating to the I Ching as well as writings on divinatory practices. One of these is the Gnostic Book of Changes, a website which compiles several translations on each hexagram. I found that these readings combined help to illuminate some of the deeper potential behind the relationships described by the original texts, and while this doesn’t constitute a definitive explanation, it has inspired me to revisit the use of English words in my performance. So I’ve gone through the 64 hexagrams and assigned each one an English word that feels most appropriate in a performance context. Future performances will include a transcription of both the ideogram and my chosen English translation (subject to change, of course) <img width="2102" height="2102" width_o="2102" height_o="2102" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b2e2971764b4a225e282389d65686661fbbf4eb328f73726c994b7800f34bf0f/IMG_0937.jpg" data-mid="210997674" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b2e2971764b4a225e282389d65686661fbbf4eb328f73726c994b7800f34bf0f/IMG_0937.jpg" /> On Divination and Synchronicity - by Marie-Louise Von Franz This is a series of lectures given by Von Franz, a student of Jung. In it she makes a case for divination being an alternative yet complementary form of scientific experimentation. Where science seeks to analyze a specific phenomenon by eliminating chance, divination uses chance to illustrate fundamental truths about psychological states. 1.25.24 - What Makes for Good Research Material?-- I have a growing collection of books that I keep in rotation, in the hope that their influence will make its way into the musical iChing practice. They tend to fall under a handful of categories...books on ancient Chinese philosophy and daoist ways of life, books that help understand Chinese forms and aesthetic practices, books about artists, books about divination, books that attempt to describe performance practice in different ways, books that lie at the intersection of sound and nature. Here are some examples:- Hunger Mountain, by David HintonOne of my favorite books about Chinese language. Really beautifully illustrates the aesthetic considerations inherent in a pictographic language, particularly in early Classical Chinese where grammatical structure was more fluid, and the ambiguity of characters was utilized to capture ineffable concepts. Really fascinating if you have any interest in the Chinese language. - The I Ching: A Biography, by Richard J. Smith This book has a lot less useful stuff in it than I originally hoped, given the title. Attempts to cover historical background of the I Ching, and is palpably Western in its thinking. I haven’t given up hope on it yet though, and think I might just be reading it with distracting expectations. - Sounds Wild and Broken, by David George Haskell While this book has little to do with music improvisation or divination, it contains some beautiful passages describing and recontextualizing the sounds of nature - how they interact with one another and create form: ”The functions of animal sounds are more diverse than our simple classification allows. Often the division between song and call is arbitrary and usually reveals more about the effect of the sound on human aesthetics than its roles among nonhuman animals.” - Standing In Space, by Mary Overlie A workbook identifying and examining what Overlie calls the Six Viewpoints of performance: Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement, Story. It’s been a puzzling challenge to interpret from a musical standpoint, but also reminds me of the physicality of live performance whether or not “movement” is centered in my personal practice. - 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Eliot Weinberger &amp; Octavio Paz My brother Edwin gifted this book to me recently - a single classical Chinese poem, translated 19 different ways, + explanations. I’m hoping for this to help expand my approach to interpreting Chinese characters. - The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler Picked up this book a while back, curious to revisit. An overview on the impact of heteronormative biases in anthropological research...i.e. archaeologists would interpret cave drawings as spears before plants, and were later proven incorrect based on additional findings. 1.25.24 - Practicing With Movement-- This past weekend I met up with a friend and mime/movement artist YT (aka&nbsp;Young Tseng). We have a show coming up, performing a musical I Ching reading as part of a Chinese New Year celebration in February. For practice we ran a series of short readings, each followed by a brief discussion. In this new arrangement I begin to notice an order of operations. First, the Octatrack delivers its randomly generated reading/melody. I usually decipher the reading on first listen, and then wait for the second to confirm. During the second playthrough, I transcribe each line as each note plays out. Then I draw the corresponding hexagram. I usually decide on a way to begin, and YT follows from there.The body of the piece - how it develops between us - is still finding form. Often we get caught up in our individual worlds. I’m usually trying to reflect the elemental relationship in each hexagram as well as the character, exploring ways to illustrate it with my musical choices. YT has told me that since he’s a little less experienced with the hexagrams and their meanings, he takes a more impressionistic approach to the visuals and music. In my solo performances, I’ve discovered that the most powerful moments involve a synchronicity that is felt and held by both audience and performer. Maybe something in the environment happens that couldn’t possibly have been planned in advance. Or maybe something internal happens - a sense of flow or channeling is achieved which feels shared both inside and outside my experience as the performer. With YT I think the goal is to cultivate these kinds of moments, not just in our singular practices but also together. Another note - despite my desire to “focus” on the musical portion of the reading, it’s becoming clear that the process of transcribing the hexagrams is itself a magnetic piece of performance art. YT told me that the initial tones from the Octatrack, paired with the movement of my hand across the paper help inform his own movement. I think it’s time to give that aspect of the performance a bit more care and aesthetic consideration. 1.10.24 - Huzi and the Shaman-- This is one of my favorite stories from Zhuangzi. Excerpted from Chapter 7: Sovereign Responses for Ruling Powers (trans. Brook Ziporyn) There was a shaman in Zheng named Jixian who could discern whether people would live or die, survive or perish. He knew how long their lives would be and what turns their fortunes would take, giving the exact year, month, week, and date for each event like some kind of god. When the people of Zheng caught sight of him, they would turn and run. Liezi went to see him, and his mind became quite intoxicated. He returned and told Huzi about it, saying, “I used to think your Course was the ultimate, but now I see that there is something beyond it.” Huzi said, “I have only finished showing you its outward ornament, not yet its inner reality. Have you really mastered this Course? […] You use the Course to browbeat the world, insisting that people believe in it. Because you try to control others, you have allowed yourself to be controlled. That is why this man was able to read your fortune on your face. Bring him here, and I will show myself to him.” The next day, Liezi brought the shaman to see Huzi. He came out and said to Liezi, “Alas! Your master is as good as dead! That is not a living being in there! He has at most a few weeks left. I saw something very strange in him, something resembling wet ashes.” Liezi went in, his collar drenched with tears, and reported these words to Huzi. Huzi said, “Just now I showed him the patterns of the earth, sprouting forth without any strenuous rumblings and without straightening themselves out. He must have seen in me the incipient impulse of the Virtuosity that blocks everything out. Try bringing him again.” The next day, Liezi brought the shaman once more. He came out and said, “Your master is lucky to have met me! He’s recovering; there are healthy signs of life! I could see his blockage moving into balance.” Liezi went in and reported this to Huzi, who said, “Just now I showed him Heaven’s soil. Impervious to both names and realities, renown and profit, the incipient impulse nonetheless comes forth from the heels. He must have seen in me the incipient impulse of all that flourishes. Try bringing him in again.” The next day, he brought the shaman yet again to see Huzi. He came out and told Liezi, “Your master is an incoherent mess, I have no way to read his face. Have him get himself together, then I’ll come back and do a reading.” Liezi went in and reported this to Huzi, who said, “Just now I showed him the vast gushing surge in which no one thing wins out. He must have seen in me the incipient impulse that balances all energies. […] Try bringing him in again.” The next day, Liezi brought him to see Huzi again. But before the shaman had even come to a halt before him, he lost control of himself and bolted out the door. Huzi said, “Go after him!” But Liezi could not catch up with him. Huzi said, “Just now I showed him what I am when not yet emerged from my source - something empty and serpentine in its twistings, admitting of no understanding of who or what. So he saw it as something endlessly collapsing and scattering, something flowing away with every wave. This is why he fled.” That was when Liezi realized he had not yet learned anything. He returned to his home and did not emerge for three years, cooking for his wife, feeding the pigs as if he were serving guests, remaining remote from all endeavors and letting all the chiseled carvings of his character return to an unhewn blockishness. Solitary like a clump of soil, he planted his physical form there in its place, a mass of chaos and confusion. And that is how he remained to the end of his days.&nbsp; 1.10.24 - Reflections from Treepeople --Finished out the year’s performances with an I Ching reading overlooking the Valley.&nbsp;Floating provided a cool blue lighting and the venue, Treepeople. I should have a video together within the next month as well! <img width="4032" height="2268" width_o="4032" height_o="2268" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/de3b78af583e631a13f39cee802eef0a1808ce0851ae15d53de45bc9a125ca15/IMG_9623.jpg" data-mid="201404247" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/de3b78af583e631a13f39cee802eef0a1808ce0851ae15d53de45bc9a125ca15/IMG_9623.jpg" /> This was my first time using an overhead projector to share the pictogram. The reading was Hexagram 59: Air over Water, 涣(dispersing). The pictogram shows rippling water and hands pushing open a door. Quite an evocative reading for a transition into the&nbsp;new year!&nbsp; 12.9.23 - A Personalized Set of Pictograms--In anticipation for my December Floating show, I’ve completed a personalized set of 64 pictographs. The plan is to be able to recall the reading from memory and draw it on an overhead to accompany the musical improvisation. After I began learning the pictograms last month, I started to notice certain relationships between the readings and characters felt weaker than others. So I took greater and greater liberties to redesign the characters so that they would make more sense to me. I figured this would also help with memorization on such a tight schedule! I like the idea of a language that evolves each time it’s written. Less a standardized, 1:1 definition and more an iterative &amp; interpretive practice. Before Chinese was standardized, it existed in myriad hyperlocal forms, practiced among diverse communities with equally diverse customs and perspectives. It’s likely these pictographic languages were constantly in flux, depending on who was doing the carving (the earliest records are bone carvings). As this practice develops, I may set up a wing of this site dedicated to how my 64 pictograms evolve alongside my practice. <img width="2476" height="2476" width_o="2476" height_o="2476" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/38855bea2c1c84336ccf69c1bc8f92778b27b08a59b5dc74dc19c41fcbc9389a/IMG_0416.jpg" data-mid="201406816" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/38855bea2c1c84336ccf69c1bc8f92778b27b08a59b5dc74dc19c41fcbc9389a/IMG_0416.jpg" /> 11.28.23--I've started practicing writing each of the hexagrams’ characters in order, in a Chinese handwriting workbook - my first time writing in a workbook like this since I was in middle school. This time I’m revisiting the paper with fresh eyes, much like my latest return to sheet music. The guidelines on the page are simply suggestions, scaffolding for further creativity. I don’t need to follow any aesthetic guidelines, or strive for consistency, because I am discovering all kinds of things even as I write. I find myself repeating the phrase, “The point is not to be pretty, the point is to be clear.” What are my intentions when I read? What are my motivations? There is definitely a part of me that desires beauty, or at least a logic of some kind. The part of me that knows how to play is eager to fill the silence. But in order to be clear, I must practice letting the space speak as well, opening the frame to the potency of the shared experience. Setting a pace of attention that I can fill with intentional decisions. I want to be as clear as possible. When I hear the melody, I want to see the hexagram and its associated imagery - yin &amp; yang, arrangement of the trigrams, and the character. I want the music to communicate these images and aesthetic relationshipss - in harmonies, in motion, in how each piece develops over time. 11.27.23 - (Zhuangzi, The Cook)--My translation is by Brook Ziporyn. From the chapter titled “The Primacy of Nourishing Life” “The cook put down his knife and said, ‘what I love is the Course, something that advances beyond mere skill. When I first started cutting up oxen, all I looked at for three years was oxen, and yet still I was unable to see all there was to see in an ox. But now I encounter it with the spirit rather than scrutinizing it with the eyes. My understanding consciousness, beholden to its specific purposes, comes to a halt, and thus the promptings of the spirit begin to flow. I depend on Heaven’s unwrought perforations and strike the larger gaps, following along with the broader hollows. I go by how they already are, playing them as they lay. So my knife has never had to cut through the knotted nodes where the warp hits the weave, much less the gnarled joints of bone. ‘A good cook changes his blade once a year: he slices. An ordinary cook changes his blade once a month: he hacks. I have been&nbsp;using this same blade for nineteen years, cutting up thousands of oxen, and yet it is still as sharp as the day it came off the whetstone. For the joints have spaces within them, and the very edge of the blade has no thickness at all. When what has no thickness enters into an empty space, it is vast and open, with more than enough room for the play of the blade. That is why my knife is still as sharp as if it had just come off the whetstone, even after nineteen years.‘Nonetheless, whenever I come to a clustered tangle, realizing that it is difficult to do anything about it, I instead restrain myself as if terrified, until my seeing comes to a complete halt. My activity slows, and the blade moves ever so slightly. Then all at once, I find the ox already dismembered at my feet like clumps of soil scattered on the ground. I retract the blade and stand there gazing at my work arrayed all around me, dawdling over it with satisfaction. Then I wipe off the blade and put it away.’” I’m fascinated with this idea of meeting resistance with restraint, cutting off “seeing” and letting a moment resolve itself (“my understanding consciousness comes to a halt, and the promptings of the spirit begin to flow”). This sentiment is echoed throughout the I Ching, the idea that inaction is a powerful choice, which allows a circumstance to resolve itself and lead to clarity. I also notice parallels with Mary Overlie’s invitation to encourage stillness and self-awareness in movement, and Jodorowsky’s description of trance - “in a trance there is no such thing as a missed opportunity or accident.” I’m encouraged by these texts to embrace and perform discomfort, tension, and silence as necessary openings for ease, resolution, and sound. 11.15.23 (Mary Overlie)--In her book Standing in Space, Mary Overlie breaks down live performance into six Viewpoints, or “materials.” One of these materials is “emotion,” which she combines with the idea of presence in movement practices. I noticed some parallels to Jodorowsky’s tarology talk of becoming a “mirror.” Both authors encourage an initial interrogation of intent.From the chapter “Emotion”:“Many performers edit out these minute details of their own state of being; it does not occur to them to include this level of detail from themselves. This editing results in a partial disengagement., an incomplete state of being, an abridged version of existence. In my opinion editing the self in this way ultimately creates a less powerful performer.“Unless gifted with presence awareness, the performer must work against a protective impulse to hide information or hiding mechanism that is triggered by lack of trust. Human instinct advises us to hide information, to avoid being fully witnessed by ‘the others’ as a survival device in daily life [...] for dancers and actors the ability to release this protective mechanism allows them to draw closer to the audience and the audience to draw closer to them. In both acting and dancing, skilled presence work allows for greater visibility, since the performer is not only reaching outward but inviting the audience to come closer and watch them execute these roles as human beings. “The technique of presence reminds me of the Zen koan. Both are minimal, elegant and yet contain so much in such a small act. Powerful aspects of performance, being in contact with a microscopic awareness of yourself and how you are received that is often hidden by conventional acting and dancing, can surface when Emotion is reduced to presence. This ‘koan’ begins with placing the performer onstage without anything, narrative or choreographic, to perform.”I’m sensing a slight difference in Jodorowsky and Overlie’s approaches. Where Overlie sees presence as an active awareness of self, maintained throughout a performance, Jodorowsky encourages a certain removal of the emotions and ideas of the self. Regarding a practice that fuses live improvised performance with divination, which approach is correct? For me, the answer is a fusion of both approaches... Begin with a moment of silence, a koan of reflection, around my intentions as both oracle and performer.In the case of performaing for an audience (rather than a single querent), the space and its interwoven energies serve as a collective recipient to the reading. If the performer wants to become a mirror, they will be reflecting the energy of the surrounding space rather than the energy of an individual.Attempt to achieve Jodorowsky’s trance, with the added notion that the responses of the internal self are as much part of the environment as anything occurring outside the body. “Every gesture, every action is perfect.” 11.14.23 (Jodorowsky &amp; Tarot)--Some relevant passages from Jodorowsky’s book The Way of Tarot - from the chapter titled “How to Become a Mirror”:“If the tarologist, without advance preparation, tries to lead the reading subject toward a transformation that raises their level of consciousness, this individual will react as if their teeth are being pulled. To change, there must be a wish to change, the knowledge that this change is possible, and that, finally, the consequences of this change can be accepted.”“The tarologist, leaving aside the prediction of the future, should be capable of realizing the motives that drive them to read [...] If our position as reader is unclear, the reading will not be clear either. The Tarot being a set of symbols - which are obscure because they are initiatory - it becomes an essentially subjective language. The tarologist needs to know what kind of psychological content their subconscious is projecting on the reading.&nbsp;“Constant attention and a strict state of alert, and a sincere acceptance of the impulses that ask us to control and direct them toward objective interpretations, should guide our reading [...] It is impossible to say, ‘I will not make any projections,’ but it is quite possible to tell yourself, ‘I will be conscious of my projections.’What drives me to perform these readings? “In order not to fall into these errors, I made a vow to myself never to give advice, but to structure the reading in such a way that the solution comes to the person. To manage this, I relied on my study of dream analysis: the psychoanalyst should not explain to their patient the meaning of oneiric symbols [...] The analyst can present different ssolutions. The individual should choose the path that best suits them.“To this end, the reader should attain a state of perfect neutrality by ignoring their desires, feelings, and opinions, in an extreme act of self-sacrifice. If the tarologist succeeds at turning themself into an ‘invisible man,’ who then is reading the Tarot? Using a metaphor, I say it is a mirror. The level of the individual’s consciousness is reflected by the purity of our mind. Using their own language (if it is a child for example, we use a childlike language), and taking on the appearance of the other, through our own emptiness, and through our words and gestures, we shall manage to get the individual to read their own Tarot. What kind of audience am I mirroring? What do I know about them?“For more authenticity in the reading, which is to say so that there is the least possible potential for a projection of the reader’s problems, personal morality, or intellectual notions [...] the tarologist must do it in a trance. Contrary to what is commonly thought, a trance is not an unconscious or irrational state. It begins with an intensification of attention and ends with the abolition of the spectator/actor reality. The person in a trance does not observe themselves; they dissolve into themselves. They are an actor in the pure state. By ‘actor’ we mean not the performer on a stage but an entity in action. For this reason, for example, trance does not allow the memory to record words, events, and actions performed. For the same reason the trance can presume the loss of the notion of time.“In a trance there is no such thing as a missed opportunity or an accident. We have no notion of space, for we have become space. We have no notion of time, for we are the phenomenon that is happening. This is a state of extreme presence in which every gesture, every action is perfect. We cannot deceive ourselves, because there is no plan or intention. There is only the pure action in the present.&nbsp;“An animal in a cage has movements comparable to the rational position. The movement of a free animal in the forest is comparable to the trance [...] The individual in a trance is not moved by what they have learned but by what they are.” 11.14.23 (Songs of Trees)--The I Ching can be traced back to the origins of the Chinese language itself - with oracle bones used for divination, carved with the pictographic inscriptions that have since been abstracted into what we call modern Chinese.These pictograms illustrate a particular way of life, and a deep relationship to nature that is further elaborated on in the Tao Te Ching. Because of this, I’ve been inspired to look to environmentally conscious writers and thinkers for inspiration. I’ve been slowly making my way through David George Haskell’s The Songs of Trees, and the introduction in particular contained some words that have stuck with me for the past couple months: “For the Homeric Greeks, kleos, fame, was made of song. Vibrations in air contained the measure and memory of a person’s life. To listen was therefore to learn what endures. I turned my ear to trees, seeking ecological kleos. I found no heroes, no individuals around whom history pivots. Instead, living memories of trees, manifest in their songs, tell of life’s community, a net of relations. We humans belong within this conversation, as blood kin and incarnate members.”“We’re all - tres, humans, insects, birds, bacteria - pluralities. Life is embodied network. These living networks are not places of omnibenevolent Oneness. Instead, they are where ecological and evolutionary tensions between cooperation and conflict are negotiated and resolved. These struggles often result not in the evolution of stronger, more disconnected selves but in the dissolution of the self into relationship.“Beause life is network, there is no “nature” or “environment,” separate and apart from humans. We are part of the community of life, composed of relationships with “others,” so the human/nature duality that lives near the heart of many philosophies is, from a biological perspective, illusory.“We cannot step outside life’s songs. This music made us; it is our nature.” https://kennyzhao.com/iChing-intro Wed, 29 Nov 2023 19:17:11 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/iChing-intro &lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt; back to blog 11.14.23 - Introduction-- I’m engaged in an ongoing practice of musical I Ching. &nbsp;The I Ching at its core is a series of 64 hexagrams (hexagrams = a stack of 6 lines, solid or broken). Readings correspond to Chinese characters whose pictographic significance were expanded into a series of interpretive texts by the Duke of Zhou around 1000 BC. These readings have since been further elaborated on by many others, including Confucius, who dedicated much of his life to studying the I Ching. ䷀ ䷡ ䷄ ䷙ ䷊ ䷈ ䷍ ䷪ ䷘ ䷲ ䷂ ䷚ ䷗ ䷩ ䷔ ䷐ ䷅ ䷧ ䷜ ䷃ ䷆ ䷺ ䷿ ䷮ ䷠ ䷽ ䷦ ䷳ ䷎ ䷴ ䷷ ䷞ ䷋ ䷏ ䷇ ䷖ ䷁ ䷓ ䷢ ䷬ ䷫ ䷟ ䷯ ䷑ ䷭ ䷸ ䷱ ䷛ ䷌ ䷶ ䷾ ䷕ ䷣ ䷤ ䷝ ䷰ ䷉ ䷵ ䷻ ䷨ ䷒ ䷼ ䷥ ䷹ There are many ways to form a hexagram. The oldest method involves a bundle of yarrow sticks, while the popular modern method involves flipping 3 coins 6 times. I use an Octatrack to generate random melodies, each of which corresponds to one of the 64 possible hexagrams. Instead of a verbal reading, my approach relies on musical interpretation to communicate aesthetic parallels to the text - translating images and emotions to sound, melody, and vibration. If there are mountains, I try to play mountains. If there is apprehension, joy, or stillness, I try to reflect that in what I play. It seems to me that in traditional divination practices, words only get at a portion of the meaning, with certain key aspects (most importantly, the imagination of the querent) being overlooked in the quest for clarity. Divination is a unique artform, in which a piece of art is placed between two participants - an oracle and a querent - and invites both participants to actively engage with it. My goal is to use this framework to invite an entire audience to engage more deeply with a live performance...to see it as a reflection of their personal story. All performances begin with a potent ingredient - the convergence of multiple consciousnesses upon a single space and time. My approach to the I Ching attempts to center and sustain the magic of this convergence. My research for this project is vast - research into the original 64 pictograms and their significance, Chinese language, approaches to musical interpretation and improvisation. This page is my documentation of ideas from that research. https://kennyzhao.com/Past-Work-1 Wed, 01 Feb 2023 11:56:45 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/Past-Work-1 iChing making sense / sacred offering / octatrack Present Tense news / autostereogram / tarot Present Tense by Zhao Music for Daydreaming performing patience / improvisation / The Green Knight Kenny’s Roomquarantine journals / remote collaboration / carrier bagKenny&#39;s Room by Kenny Zhao, Annabelle Maginnis, Def Sound, Twolips, Jess Joy, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe https://kennyzhao.com/Poems Thu, 09 Apr 2020 18:55:32 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/Poems (8.9) ---artist is a state of mind.the self-respect to give myself the time of day.the pleasure of looking/listening to myself in the futureand present.No, it won’t just be a fleeting thought- The Space (4.19)--- The space is hard to find because it exists between the ones we go on purposeless a destination than a place I found myself.Have I been before? or is it new each time? What is an old experience but a new one with expectations I want to be here and then the wanting take me out. Intention can really spoil things, huh? no wonder then, that play should be taken playfully. Rhyming words, riding alongside an unteachable moment. That they may outlive an exmplanation is the property of life, cherished or not. Where then is the space for anything else? When Does Play Run Out? (4.12)I thought I caught myself at the end of it. but it was only my own hesitation. stilted I stumbled into&nbsp;arguments of meditation wielding silence&nbsp; like a flaming sword................ maybe I’d hopedthat serious could be dependableat least. but serious caved quickly to laughter which increased. Life Hack (4.9)--- If the opposite of wasting is spending, what does that leave for us? Where does the rest go somewhere between the exchange of goods and services between the handout and the bootstrap a palm, outstretched counting change. Where does that leave a gift suspended between charity and guilt trading wishes for legal tender an intention, once now an impression, at best. Or can anything precious yet live is there a place for us in our shining city? Love languages overwritten by machinations of gross efficiency amid the ringing the buzz the bandwidth, reached the hand over fist running, tripping, surfing, somewhere you. somewhere me. Fugitive Spaces (3.25)---An artist is a detective of fugitive spaces ready to don a wig produce a magnifing glass to get the scoop who’s the client? Myself, pushing a handful of coins into my own fist. little to go off on - a name, or otherwise a hunch delivered always with much emotion. Once again it’s time to consult the canine to put an ear to the ground to the raised eyebrow of the skeptical public Their lack of confidence is not my concern the pipe is lit He’s taking the case the pipes are lit the pipes are calling The pipes are clogged with what we tossed down now to be reckoned with A medusa of hair on the shower tile floor corrupt with chemicals Where does it all go, anyway? Or has it always sat just under the drain? How could I have been born guilty? My loss of innocence an admission of guilt my bildungsroman, bourne out not of sacrifice but from bodies absorbed I was born a cannibal. (4.5)--- ...could I be so occupied with the expanse of my body? battles hard fought -&nbsp; eras come and gone on the surface of my own skin What is the appropriate scale of my wonders? My sympathy is an expanding universe bourne from the first explosive moment of love transcribed in flesh touching everything eventually. To Be Sick (12.3)---to be sick is to know health water drawn up from a well an empty bucket bound to shock emerging from its tunnel of rock built on trust, now betrayed can I return tomorrow, unscathed? or is the deal I thought I’d struck broken, ruined, a lifetime’s luck. https://kennyzhao.com/Book-Report-Blog Sat, 07 Jan 2023 18:24:27 +0000 Kenny's Room https://kennyzhao.com/Book-Report-Blog BOOK REPORTSOn Divination and Synchronicity: The Psychology of Meaningful Chance - Marie-Louise Von Franz -- This book is a transcript of five lectures given by Von Franz, a student and colleague of Carl Jung. Von Franz seems to be most well-known for studying fairy-tales and their underlying archetypes, but she and Jung both shared a deep appreciation and respect for what they described as Oriental philosophy. These lectures help ground divination as a way of getting at reality while also participating in it. One of Von Franz’s main points is that divination can be complementary rather than contradictory with scientific study - one seeks to make chance its center, while the other seeks to remove chance. Both processes seek to understand reality from different angles. I noticed that in reading this book, the whole picture did not become clear until I had finished reading the final lecture, and so I went back through the chapters to try to synthesize what I found to be the most important points from each one. LECTURE 1 Divination is a synthesis of a-causal and causal thinking, physical and psychological events, timeless time and cyclical time - binaries converging in a single chance encounter. Von Franz compares the sequence of qualitative number values in the I Ching as a kind of rhythm, because rhythm is also a way that number sequences are rendered as archetypes.One of China’s early number systems was built around two matrices - the Luo Shu and the He Tu. They are strange to us in the West, because our modern use of numbers comes from a history of overlooking their qualitative aspects. “the Luo Shu is the world of time in which we live, and underneath is always the eternity rhythm, the He Tu.” “With the development of consciousness, we have got ahold of a part that we now manipulate and call our own, behaving as f it were something which we completely possess. That has happened in the whole development of mathematics: from numbers being gods, they have been desecrated into being something which is arbitrarily posited by a mathematician’s ego.” LECTURE 2 Many people believe with an emotional conviction that statistical truth is the truth, despite the fact that statistics can only approximate real circumstances. There must be some underlying archetype that fuels this emotional conviction. Counting - a power once attributed to the gods in ancient myths - is now widely accessibly to humans, like a Promethean flame. But without considering its archetypical qualities, we are doomed to miscalculate our surroundings. “thus if nowadays man believes that he can handle an infinite series of natural numbers, that is an inflation, an identification wih the archetype of the Self, or of the godhead.” “We can therefore say that those people who nowadays do not reasonably appreciate the calculus of probability and statistics as useful and reasonable tools of the human mind, but who believe secretly that we can master nature and find the truth about everything, have fallen into such an inflation, into a secret identification with the Sungod.” “the unconscious knows things; it knows the past and future, it knows things about other people […] absolute knowledge is like candlelight, and if the electric light of ego consciousness is burning, then one cannot see the candlelight.” in scientific experiments, chance is the enemy. In divination, chance is placed at the center of the ritual, using a single instance as a source of information. LECTURE 3 Oracles do not predict with exactitude, they simply cast a wide net in which things are expected to play out. An “expectation list.” (56) ancient Chinese arithmetic arranges its qualitative numbers in matrices. Fields of archetypes. “all archetypes are contaminated with each other […] the unconscious is a field in which the excited points are the archetypes and in which one can define neighborhood relationships.” (63) The I Ching is a way of reflecting on the current situation, and acting in awareness of it. Ethics is highly circumstantial, depending on where and when certain actions are taken. Here feeling has to do with measure - a quantitative solution to a qualitative question. LECTURE 4 More than just quantitative values, numbers have qualitative properties that are just as real. Beyond archetypical characters and subjects, we also have archetypical sequences of events in stories. (the hero’s journey being one of them) “there is no split in the stories, [oriental storytellers] have such a feeling relationship to the archetypal connections that they always know which fairytale would b the continuation of the lastand then just start the new melody, which makes those long, long chains of tales.” (80) “it can therefore be said that ‘to tell’ is to go through time in a rhythm - to go on, and on, and on, in the rhythm of the archetypes, and that this has a secret order” (80) Dreams can also be regarded as following this kind of flow of events “there is, so to speak, a one-moment, a two-moment, a three-moment, having to do ith time and with ethical behavior, which in our psychological language means with the feeling quality. Ethics are a question of feeling, not of the intellect.” There is a rhythmic order to our psychic energy. When we are bored, or over-excited, our bodies respond in ways to change the pace. These rhythms live in our body and come out as “displaced reaction rhythms” (anxiety? over-eating? running?) Understanding these energic imbalances and responding correctly allows us to rebalance. 💡 This introduces a big question for me - how do I redirect my own energetic imbalances for the sake of a specific reading? Certainly helps explain the importance of our recent pre-reading warm-ups - working out whatever we might be coming in with. It also helps rephrase the readings. While I think I’m already attempting to express the imagery of the readings, this passage helps explain the importance of conveying their energetic properties...how that transference can cause a deep physical reaction that takes shape in the imagination. (a la Oliveros) “If we know the deepest underlying archetypal constellation of our present situation then we can, to a certain extent, know how things will go.” LECTURE 5 Proposes that reality is set up as two wheels intersecting - one is an eternal, acausal order, the other is time and space. Science seeks to understand the eternal order from a conceptual, unobtrusive observation point. Eliminating the chance from reality. Synchronistic events use chance operations to reveal bits of reality from the point of intersection - where order intersects with time and space. Why is ritual important to be treated with play? Because when taken too seriously, the ego sacrifices sincerity for the sake of winning. “In all primitive civilizations ritual and play cannot be separated [...] That is a well-known fact, exemplified by all chinese rituals, which are a game, play, and a sacred ritual at the same time. What is the common factor psychologically? We can get an answer from the Chinese themselves: they say that a ritual or a game needs complete sincerity and complete detachment from desire and wishes. For instance, if you want to play fair, then play, for only fair play is real play. The ego which wants to win must be sacrificed, for it seduces you into cheating. In spite of all the passion with which you participate, you have always to have a sacrificial attitude, knowing that you may lose, and then you have to keep face, and not strangle your opponent. So one has to be completely and passionately involved, and at the same time sacrifice any kind of ego desire.” <img width="2388" height="1668" width_o="2388" height_o="1668" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2fa8d84bdbe74d0c5981764a1f0eef406bf474b4b8938011f3b5689ce79643a2/Double_Mandala.jpg" data-mid="212438527" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2fa8d84bdbe74d0c5981764a1f0eef406bf474b4b8938011f3b5689ce79643a2/Double_Mandala.jpg" /> Talking Music - Laurie Anderson / Pauline Oliveros-- There are some things that these two women say that I wish I could burn into my memory. To me that’s one reason to make art - catchy ideas - and I think they share an interest in that.&nbsp; I was definitely struck by how scattered their trajectories were. Both Laurie Anderson and Pauline Oliveros sort of bummed around different interests...obviously drawn by deep curiosity but indifferent to how these things might be perceived narratively from the outside. Which is refreshing and reassuring. Laurie started with violin, studied biology for a year, moved to Barnard as an art major, then went to two different schools for like a year at a time. Got kicked out multiple times. Pauline was obsessed with the accordion, dropped out of music school to be an accordion teacher, went back to school in SF with Terry Riley, and started improvising with a small group of friends. These are both artists who led with their pieces - whose ideas came first, and the methods were put together after the fact. In the Oliveros interview the interviewer identifies this: “So in your music, each piece becomes its own model. Which explains why your pieces have been so different over a period over time.” A carrier bag, if you will. Laurie in particular had some ideas about technology that spoke to me. “When you have too much equipment, that’s a real limitation. It’s a strange sort of paradox. I use old electronics as well. I like trying to push them into other modes - use them for things that they were not supposed to be used for. That’s satisfying. But you can get into a trap. I think a lot of musicians are in that trap - trying to get the latest thing that’s going, to fix everything up. It won’t. You have to read the manual, first of all, in order to understand it. And work with it; it’s an instrument. You have to work with it intimately, not just go off in a studio and plug it in to fix up your music. You have to try a lot of things with it, experiment with it. You can’t force it to do things. It won’t work that way for you. She also has a blurb in which she describes how label success was not something her friends complained about, but perhaps people outside her social circle might have. And she understands that reasoning, since there is a certain necessary exclusivity to the avant-garde. But the work itself will stand on its own, the criticism is more about the system of distribution. Pauline was such a hoot to read, her voice and opinion are so strong in the interview! So much of her interview resonated with and deepened my interest in music as ritual, and beyond. The fact that her musical choices are led more by her own ear than by any tradition. How she played with tape music like an instrument. How she gathers sounds she wants to hear and finds ways to recreate them. The way her personal experience gives her confidence to know others will like it.&nbsp; “I think of composition as a slowed-down improvisation, and improvisation as a sped-up composition.” She even talks about the function of these pieces, how they can direct energy...and that it doesn’t need to be a religious or political thing to be effective and powerful.&nbsp;“The whole issue of music as entertainment is something I have trouble with. Although I’m as happy to be entertained as anyone else, I don’t think of these things as entertainment. The meditations, and some of the other things that I do, are opportunities to change and to explore who we are, and what we do, and how we do what we do with each other. Tools. They have a different function from just entertaining. The interview ends with her describing her excitement about some ongoing performance series taking place in her local community, and how that’s much more exciting than whatever academia is up to. “Almost every night there’s been somebody there doing something. It was very special, somehow. It’s an easy walk over to Niblock’s loft, and it’s very comfortable, and you sit there and get a closeup of someone’s work for the evening. Afterwards there’s a lot of camaraderie and an easy walk home. That’s very nice.”