Project 2 - Forgotten Culture

PROJECT 2：

FORGOTTEN　CULTURE

forgotten　culture

Project 2 Brief

For the class trip to Penang , sadly I

can 't make it due to having orchestra concert .

Still, we are open to a variety choice to visit in KL.

Unfortunately I have no any free time to visit any spot in the list .

But still there is one forgotten culture in my mind that I had chosen to be my cultural element.

My selected cultural element

苼 Sheng

The sheng is a Chinese mouth-blown free reed instrument consisting of vertical pipes. It is a polyphonic instrument and enjoys an increasing popularity as a solo instrument.

It is one of the oldest Chinese instruments.

（高音）

History of Sheng

The sheng's reeds vibrate at a fixed frequency unlike single reeds, double reeds, and pointed free reeds which vibrate at the pitch according to the length of the attached air column. Covering the hole(s) on a traditional sheng's pipe(s) would cause the entire length of the pipe(s) to resonate with the reeds' frequency. If the hole is open, the resonant frequency would not match, and hence no sound is produced.

The sheng is sounded by either exhaling or inhaling into the mouthpiece, and players can produce a relatively continuous sound without pause by quickly switching between the two - much like bow changes for stringed instruments. The traditional performance style is to sound two or three notes at the same time by adding a fifth and/or octave above the main melody note.

Sheng is the only Chinese wind instrument capable of sounding many notes at the same time.

Shengs can be classified into traditional sheng (传统笙) and keyed sheng (键笙) .Keyed shengs were only developed in the 20th century, c. 1950 onwards.

While the traditional sheng were first mentioned in bone oracle writings dating from the 14th to the 12th centuries BCE.

There is also a few types of Sheng

-Traditional

- Keyed -Soprano

-Alto

-Tenor

-Bass

- Keyboard

Why I choose Sheng as my cultural element?

Sheng is the first instrument I played in the Chinese orchestra and whenever people asked me "what instrument are you playing "

When I told them the instrument I play is Sheng

non of them know about this instrument.

I always had to show them the picture of Sheng, video to let them heard the sound and also tell them some unique part and characteristic of Sheng.

So, to me, Sheng is the forgotten culture that even Chinese society are not aware of it.

I would want to try to make it into a conceptual art to visualise how Sheng it is to me.

Which aspect I'm focusing on?

I will focus more on what Sheng made me fell of from every aspect to the aspect of its structure.

Keyword

-Layer

-Repetition

-Overlap

-Fusion