Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalists

LIN Chi-Wei’s Tape Music 2004-2013  was a project that lasted nine years, performed at different venues around the world. Through monotones or similar tones, it formed a phonetic chorus with people’s chanting in an orderly fashion, invoking a sense of collective existence, which seemed specifically meaningful in this technological world of digital media. In the solo exhibition at IT Park, Lin clearly stated the aesthetic meaning of this long-term project with elements such as documents, props, sketches and video installations. On the one hand, it contradicted the massive use of technological media in sound creation in Taiwan since the 90s; on the other hand, as physical bodies were deemed as a prerequisite for making sounds, the simple and unadorned quality of Lin’s sound rituals seemed to have merged human beings and nature, re-establishing the primitive connection individuals and pointing to a realm un-alienated by technological symbols. (Commentator / CHEN Tai-Song)

About the Work 

The Tape Music series originated from a performance at Sounding Taipei 2004. In this performance, titled “Digital-Analog Music,” the host waved four banners, each in a different color, to conduct a live concert co-created by the audience operating noise-making instruments. Meanwhile, a long “tape” (called “sound intestine” in Mandarin) written with phonetic characters and poetic lines was passed from the stage through the audience, inviting people to interpret and sing. This performance subsequently evolved into a series of sound experiments, which share one common denominator – the audience as a component of a tape drive. The mission of the composer, in this case, was to provide the audience with a simple sounding program (the rules of game) that enabled the audience to self-organize and utilize their body or instruments prepared by the composer to autonomously complete the performance. 

For a decade (2004-2013), the “sound intestine” was performed in more than fifty sessions through collaborations with groups from different class and of varying nature worldwide. Apart from being performed in art spaces, the “sound intestine” was also featured in a range of music and performance art festivals, as well as bars, live houses, experimental theaters, and local communities, where the artist worked with various local groups. Furthermore, the Social Measurement through Sound series – a video installation of the “sound intestine” – was derived from the collaborations with non-artistic groups. 

Sound Intestine Mixer 2004-2013 is a ten-year conclusion of the Tape Music project. From more than fifty recorded performances, the artist selected thirty-two performances filmed from a similar angle, and showed them on thirty-two digital photo frames at the same time. The audience could not only watch all the interpretations of the “sound intestine” by different groups, but also operate a mixing console to manipulate the sound tracks. In the exhibition, in addition to the two installations described above, a range of archives related to the project was shown, including the artist’s notes, sketch drawings, performance photos, and the master tapes.

About the Artist

LIN Chi-wei was born in Taiwan in 1971. He joined Zero and Sound Liberation Organization (1992-2000) in 1992. He received  a degree in French from Catholic Fu Jen University, and once studied in the graduate program of Traditional Arts in Taipei National University of the Arts (formerly known as National Institute of the Arts), and Studio National des Arts Contemporains (le Fresnoy), and had participated in Taipei Post-Industrial Arts Festival in 1995.