Sacred Forest Premiere Concert

In March 2024 he wrote the four sets of images up in two documents for PTS: the visual contents of 25 March listed how each section would be played, and the work statement of 30 March gave each one a name. Song of Alishan became Island Impression, Poem of the Mountains, an extension of Project %, mountains evolving at the edge of the horizon with every sunrise and sunset. The Atayal Overture became Revival of Life, Golden Evolution: particles born out of the void, answering the Atayal ancestral song “Live well”, putting out new branches with the rhythm. The Makatau Rhapsody became The Soul of Flowers, Fantasy in Bloom, generative Impressionist flowers opening in a wilderness of souls. April Rain Fantasia became Dream Sea Drift, Soul Sea and SoulFish: from the soul to the soul sea and the soul fish, until a whole shoal swims across the screen.

He recorded a rehearsal demo for each piece; the file names date them 25 March for Song of Alishan, 6 May for the Atayal Overture and 7 May for April Rain Fantasia. A video of OneSong Orchestra plays in a corner of each recording, and he plays along to it to see whether the images can follow the sections of the music.

At the planning meeting on 4 June, PTS hoped for gestures the audience could see on the night, so that they could feel the art being made live. He handed in a device layout: the APC40 to switch pieces, the SPD-SX drum pad to drum and let the beats set off the images, the Launchpad to trigger effects, the MiniLab keyboard to change size and colour most of the time, the Orba to wave and summon the mountains, and the Leap Motion to read the movement of his hands. At the start of Song of Alishan he raised his hand to summon the sunrise: TouchDesigner read the height of his palm from the Leap Motion and passed it to the mountain scene as the height of the sun.

The other pieces each had their own gestures: in the Atayal Overture new branches grew with the notes of the rhythm and each new section brought a new set of colours; in the Makatau Rhapsody raising both hands made the flowers grow faster and the position of a wave decided where seeds fell; in April Rain Fantasia waving changed how fast the creatures appeared and swam, and drum hits controlled light and dark.

The rehearsal was on the evening of 28 June: OneSong Orchestra took its places on stage, Che-Yu Wu stood at the console on the left, and the images on the big screen went through the music with the orchestra once. The performance was the next evening, 29 June. It rained, and the audience sat in raincoats.

The two films below were shot by the same camera set up below the stage: one shows contour lines on the screen at the rehearsal, the other the mountains on the night.

Online registration through the PTS Friends programme was full by 6 June. The running order PTS drafted in May had Song of Alishan open the evening at seven, then speeches, then a musical tribute in which the orchestra played the Atayal Overture, the Makatau Rhapsody, April Rain Fantasia and three other pieces, and the screening at eight. The big 8K screen stood behind the orchestra, and the images for all four pieces were made on it. PTS broadcast the documentary at 9 pm on 4 July, releasing it on PTS+ the same night.

Three of the sources have their own pages on this site: Project % · Island, The Soul of Flowers, Soul Sea and SoulFish. That October the mountains of Project % appeared again as a vertical film on AUO’s booth at ART TAIPEI, as Algorithmic Verses: Island Impressions, Poems of the Hundred Peaks.