A room's light became the controller in a Berlin live set
Nanzhen Yang and Song Xin's The Incomplete Moon took Unreal Engine off the joypad and wired it to the venue, under a moon nobody could touch.
The moon in The Incomplete Moon never held still long enough to be admired. In the documentation Nanzhen Yang and Song Xin later posted, a pale disc hangs over two figures at a table of synths and laptops while ragged shadows cross it. The set ran 26 and a half minutes on Sept. 19 at Studio dB in Berlin, on the closing night of Re:Frame, the first edition of CiLENS's moving-image program, co-presented with the collective Jiā La.
An excerpt from The Incomplete Moon, with sound: the Unreal Engine moon above, the performance at Studio dB below. Clip courtesy of the artists, from their documentation.
Nanzhen Yang played the sound live. Song Xin ran the picture in Unreal Engine, credited with interface design, live visuals and dialogue, and the artists say the visuals respond to light in the physical room.
Top, the cave as it rendered live. Bottom, the wired sculpture beside the laptop as the light on it changes. Clip courtesy of the artists.
None of this is a side trip for Song Xin, who builds games: BUG MOD, an Unreal Engine game about customizing a pet insect, and this year a credit on Guanyin II: The Caretaker with Lawrence Lek, whom we interviewed last year. I recently wrote about whale song driving a render engine in Singapore. Here a room did the driving. The engine keeps turning out to be an instrument, best played in front of people.
The Incomplete Moon at Studio dB: the stage, the sound rig, the sculpture wired in beside the laptop, the cave, and two lines of Song Xin's onscreen dialogue. Photos: Iris Wang. Visuals courtesy of Nanzhen Yang and Song Xin.
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