Jiani Tang

 Candy Dream Live Performance

 

Role:

Performer, Multi Channel Sound Designer, Animator, Crafter

 

Performance Description:

 

  I believe that everyone used to have childhood dreams. While some people were able to make them come true, some were not; while they grew older, their dreams gradually faded away and remain as dreams that cannot be realized ever. 

      

      Candy Dream is an interactive performance using video mapping and multichannel audio technique. It was performed at Live Nude and Tech Show at MAGNET in NYU on December, 2013. The concept of this performance is about getting closer to the purest state of childhood, a state in which one can dream without limitation. 

 

       The goal of “Candy Dream” performance is to take my audience into a childhood dream. To let them behave spontaneously like children and get closer to the purest state of children. A childish animation along with an exaggerate clown performance is the best way to bring my audience into the children’s world. Before the performance, I expect my audience to respond to the performance spontaneously like children.

 

       At the begining of the performance, I  handed out some candies to let my audiences taste the sweetness. During the performance, I danced in front of a video. The performance video is a stop motion animation, using colorful candies to construct a fairytale. I want to use candies as the elements of the background video because I believe that using candies to tell a story can recall audience’s childhood memory. Also, a fairytale with candies of rainbow colors is imaginative, nostalgic, sweet and pretty. Besides, my live performance added some characters to the story.

    For the audio part, I created an effect of spinning the performance music around. The sound will from four to eight speakers spread equally around the space. I made a multi-channel sound patch with Max MSP software as my performance music. The music from multi-channel was routed from a computer running Max MSP to a MOTU set, which is able to send multi-channel audio to speakers around the room to achieve the effect that the music is spinning around the black box space.

 

      I named my performance candy dream because I wished my dream to conquer my stage fright and to be a brave person would finally come true at the final “Live, Nude, Tech” show. Also, my nickname at home is “candy”, because its pronunciation in Chinese is exactly the same as that of my last name. For me, to perform and dance with the animation in front of the public is a big challenge. I really wanted to give myself a hug after the performance, because no matter what this performance was ended like, at least I conquered my inner fear and challenged myself.     

     In fact, this performance went on the right track of my expectation and also gave me a little extra surprise. When I handed out my audience candies and shadow puppets at the beginning of the show, I could hear their laugh and chat and see their expressions on their faces. That is the most awesome part to me, because I could closely experience audience’s reaction and felt that they were truly participating in the performance. To me, the reaction from audience at the beginning of the performance gave me a huge encouragement.

 

Live. Nude. Tech Show at MAGNET NYU, NY 2013