Installation2026
The Last Input — Before the End
Contents & work details
- Archive year
- 2026
- Type
- Installation
- Artist
- Che-Yu Wu 吳哲宇
- Premiere
- 4 July 2026, C-LAB, Taipei
- Showcase
- 22 to 24 October 2026, C-LAB (two performances and a post-show talk on 24 October)
- Sound field
- 49.4-channel spatial sound field (49 surround speakers and 4 subwoofers)
- Medium
- Piano and controller input, a live-computed digital world, sixteen MIDI tracks, spatial harmony
- Residency
- 2026 IRCAM Sound Off: emerging artist residency
- Presented by
- C-LAB × Taiwan Sound Lab
- Co-presented by
- IRCAM–Centre Pompidou, France
- Supported by
- Ministry of Culture, Taiwan
- Performance photography
- 林亞蓁, commissioned by C-LAB
Overview
This is a digital life system that grows on its own inside a 49.4-channel sound field: a multidimensional space enclosed by 49 surround speakers and 4 subwoofers.
In the performance I play a mad scientist of creation, building a world out of notes and leading the audience to observe and experiment. Early on the system holds plants and all kinds of strange creatures; then it develops into two systems that evolve by themselves: a City that keeps building upward and tries to hold order, and a Virus that keeps spreading, mutating and eroding. Starting from the making of the land and its species, when you sit at the centre you first hear buildings rising from the ground in the distance, and then, in the chaos that dissonant sound brings, you hear everything around you slowly being eaten.
Two kinds of input
The work runs on two kinds of input. The knobs on the lab desk set the laws by which this world runs: humidity, wind speed and the speed at which time flows. The keys of the electric piano are the interface that throws variables into the world. A single note plants a seed; a chord calls up a flock of birds or a city, and these begin to form complex structures with one another. The world responds in real time, growing into shapes even I cannot predict.
Randomness and the uncontrollable
Since I was small I have loved simulating and computing ecosystems. The moment the virus is born, and the direction it spreads from, are decided entirely by the environmental conditions the world has accumulated by itself. Every performance is unique; even I cannot be sure which note set off the chain reaction. Randomness and the uncontrollable are themselves part of this performance, and the ending grows anew with every run.
“What fascinates me is this: once my system is built, if it produces some complexity or behaviour beyond me, then that thing is the work itself. So I simply designed it into the theatre. Halfway through I say, I give up control; whatever happens next, I watch it as a member of the audience.”
Things really live in this world. Every tile is rendered live by the performance system: the same playing gives the same picture; different playing, a different world.
On stage
In the performance I sit at the piano in a white lab coat, like a scientist. The coat stands for starting from zero: studying the world I created with fresh curiosity. I play a few notes and new creatures appear on the terrain, so I pull the camera closer and let the whole room watch together: a horse lowering its head to drink, small insects scurrying through the grass. Laughter rises from the audience, and I let the image linger a little longer. In that moment, everyone in the room is witnessing the birth of a world.
In performance order: before the start, the genesis terminal, creation, terrain, plants, the City, the end; the last two are the post-show talk and the group photo. Photography: 林亞蓁, commissioned by C-LAB. Click any image to enlarge.
Audio-Visual Audio
Most audiovisual performances start with the image and add sound to it; this work is the other way round. Through the musical performance I first build a living simulated world, and sound is simply what that world produces as it runs: a horse makes a drinking sound only when it reaches the water, and the city roars only once it has grown. I call this logic of performance Audio-Visual Audio: the performance produces the world, and then the world itself joins in as part of the sound performance.
The performance begins with a line of commands: the terminal boots, allocates a 22 by 22 terrain lattice, connects the 49.4-channel speaker array, then waits for hands. At the end the same wireframe cube is drawn once more.
- 01
Genesis
- The hum of genesis: noise carves the first light
- First life: one geometric bird, the signature tone
PerformerTurns a knob; the land rises
WorldTerrain grows out of white noise
- 02
Terrain
- Land and climate: relief, ruggedness, day, rain, wind
- The first seed: from the desk to the piano
PerformerPresses the first key
WorldA single note lands as a plant
- 03
City
- The stacking of civilisation: chords feed buildings
- The richer the harmony, the taller the city
PerformerImprovises, desk and piano in turn
WorldFlocks, beasts, towers stack upward
- 04
Virus war
- Virus birth: corruption crosses a threshold
- Panic and rescue: consonance heals
PerformerPlays faster, trying to save the city
WorldThe virus spreads, mutates, attacks
- 05
Letting go
- The Last Input: the final input
- Autonomy: a ladder war between two species
- The virus speaks
PerformerStops giving input; becomes an audience
WorldThe system runs itself; the outcome is computed
- 06
Survivors
- Darkness and silence
- Epilogue: something outside the cycle
PerformerListens with the audience
WorldSomething has survived
- Order: the City
- Chaos: the Virus
- Outside the cycle
- Brighter frames are the three signature moments
The last time
The 'last' in the title comes from a question I put to this era: when AI can generate everything, what meaning is left in the one input a human presses by hand? An input that cannot be taken back comes closer to being real than generation that can be redone without limit. When the last input is pressed, I take off the white coat and walk off the stage; what remains is no longer mine to decide, and is handed to the system to wrestle with chaos.
Premiered on 4 July 2026 at the C-LAB workshop showcase; two performances and a post-show talk follow on 24 October.
- 01
Keys and knobs
88-key MIDI controller and 8 knobs
- 02
Input analysis
note = seed · chord = flock consonance = growth · dissonance = decay
- 03
A living world
terrain, plants, creatures city vs virus, computed live
- 04
Sixteen MIDI tracks and positions
ambient / event / narrative layers the spatial coordinates of every object
- 05
Sound and space
Ableton Live as pure sound source Spat spatial harmony
- 06
49.4 channels
49 surround speakers and 4 subwoofers sound arrives from where things are
Auditory perspective: what the camera looks at is what you hear (proximity, on-screen energy and visible density feed back to the sound)
Sixteen tracks, three layers
| Layer | What sounds | How |
|---|---|---|
| Ambient | Buildings, virus, plant families, the bird | Breathes with the state of the world: the taller the tower the higher the note, up to fourteen at once; trees and palms low, shrubs mid, grasses and reeds high, flowers as colour |
| Event | Topping out, infection, collapse, impact, flocks, seeds, birdsong, ground creatures | One-shot sounds the world throws up: a seed’s velocity is audible; ants high, horses mid, the elephant in the sub-bass |
| Narrative | The blessing, the hand, shutdown, the typewriter | Cues on the timeline that always land: the four-voice blessing enters seventy milliseconds apart, and shutdown is a single trigger |
The sound sources and spatial rack follow no timeline of their own: whatever event the world emits, they sound.
Rehearsal footage
Credits
- Concept, system and performance
- Che-Yu Wu
- Presented by
- C-LAB (Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab) × Taiwan Sound Lab (TSL)
- In collaboration with
- IRCAM–Centre Pompidou, France
- Supported by
- Ministry of Culture, Taiwan
- Residency
- 2026 IRCAM Residency Programme for Emerging Artists
- Technical guidance
- 泓凱 | Taiwan Sound Lab
- Spatial audio
- Tsang Ching-Hsuan | engineer, Taiwan Sound Lab
- Musical feedback
- Chen Chia-Hui | composer
- One-to-one mentoring
- Johannes | IRCAM
- Theatre feedback
- Huang Ling-Hsuan | lecturer
- Performance photography
- 林亞蓁, commissioned by C-LAB
- Performance video
- C-LAB
- System imagery
- MonoLab
Context & sources
Exhibitions, research & collaborations
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