One Man Band

Production Credits
Creator and Director : Tong Wu
Visual Designer : Tong Wu
Animation Developer : Tong Wu
Music "静夜思":
    Vocalist & Composer: Yayi Cai
    MIDI Arrangement: Fei Gao (Black Dog)

Showcased at:
solo exhibition "Daily Dividuals", LATITUDE Gallery, New York

Press Coverage:
ARTRON 雅昌艺术头条 (in Chinese)
Exhibition Review of Tong Wu's 'Daily Dividuals' Solo Exhibition

The Paper.cn 澎湃新闻 (in Chinese)
Tong Wu: Diving and drifting, staring and distracting

Southern Art 南方艺术 (in Chinese)
Young Artist Tong Wu: Daily Dividuals, the existence of me and me.

Work Type :
3D Animated Video, single-chanel video sculpture
3D printing sculpture

Design & Development Tool:
3D Interaction and Animation - Unity
3D modeling and rendering - Cinema 4D
3D scanning - itSeez3D, in3D


Post-Production Tool
Conceptual Poster Rendering: Keyshot
visual materials touchup and video editing - Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Premiere Pro

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"One Man Band“ is a story about doppelgänger. It creates an infinitely looping space in which one’s physical body and digital doubles coexist and fluidly transform from one to the other, therefore the “one” becomes many yet “many” are actually the “one”.

“One Man Band” Conceptual 3D-printed Sculpture Series - “I am Your Fan”

As a fantasy monologue reflecting on the COVID quarantine life, where the boundary between the physical and virtual worlds has become vague, the video discusses the expanding philosophical brokerage between the physical world, the virtual sphere, and online avatars and the fluid yet dystopian nature of "self."

Each scene in the video story is connected through behaviors related to “gaze” — looking through the window, watching surveillance footage, standing in front of the mirror, as the gaze being the only thing to take a person to go beyond his/her small living space. Therefore, the attitude toward “gaze” is no longer critical, but more with tenderness and obsession.

“One Man Band” Conceptual 3D-printed Sculpture Series - “Duo”

The background music of "One Man Band" is derived from "静夜思 / Thoughts on a Tranquil Night”, a classic 8th century Tang Dynasty poem in Nanyin style. Nanyin music, as one of the oldest ensemble music types in existence, is a style of Chinese classical music from Tong Wu's hometown, the southern Chinese province of Fujian. The singer usually sings in Hokkien, and the five instruments in classic Nanyin (Pipa, Sanxian, Dongxiao, Er xian, and clapper) complement each other to form a delicate and gentle melody. In this tune, the singer segments the entire poem into syllables by disassembling it with the phonology in Hokkien and lengthens the end of each note. Hereon, the language abandons semantics to form visualized and unrecognizable tones.

“One Man Band” Conceptual 3D-printed Sculpture Series - “Trio”

The "one and only" individual converts into numerous avatars here, and the avatars are continuously derived, mutated, and become distinct unities in the imaginary cyber world. As one continues to blend and penetrate into one’s “dividual”, would the passiveness and criticism within the concept of "alienation" gradually weaken once the physical selves start the imagination on their avatars?

Domestic Daikon

Work Type : #Installation #Collaborative #Light
Materials: Found objects / Light Tubes

Made in collaboration with Deming Chen and Longxin Chen

“Domestic Daikon”, which means “domestic-grown white radish” in Japanese, is a light installation made of ready-made: Using traffic cones as the base, the installation was filled with LED light tubes and food trash: empty drinking bottles, food packing boxes and plastic bags. All the ready-made materials were hung with fishing lines, all together constituting the look of ice-cream cones.

Trashed, dirty ready-mades together compose a sweet, shining and dreamy figure, “Domestic Daikon” gets its inspiration from a contradiction I’ve observed during my two-week residency in Yokohama, Japan: From the one side, streets in Japan, even with so few public trash cans, are impressively clean. There are very strict rules for trash sorting, disposal and recycle. Littering could receive heavy punishment including five years in jail, or fine up to 100 thousand USD. But from the other side, we realize there is no such thing as plastic bag usage charge. And foods in Japan are usually over-packing: 3-4 plastic bags could be handed out to customers every time you shop in convenience shops like Family Marts or 7-11. During the residency we rely heavily on convenience shops to buy foods and drinks. After one and half week, even we had been frequently taking out trash, we were left with huge amount of empty bottles, food packing papers, and so forth. To commenting on this situation, we took use of the trash and created three giant “ice-creams” using these trashes.

CN:

「国产大根」，即中文中的”国产白萝卜“是我在2019年1月在日本横滨黄金町艺术社区驻地两周时，与另外两位一同驻地的福建籍艺术家共同完成的现成品灯光装置。它以三角锥路障为底座，填充LED灯管和空饮料瓶，吃完的食物包装盒和塑料袋，并用钓鱼线悬挂，搭建成三个巨型冰淇淋的外观，用废弃肮脏的现成品构成了一个甜蜜，闪耀而短暂的意象。

作品的灵感其实来源于两周之中我们观察到的一个矛盾： 一方面来说，日本的街道即使鲜有垃圾桶也是非常干净，居民社区或者便利店中的垃圾箱也都需要严格分类和定点放置，街上随处可见对于乱扔垃圾处以重罚（大概坐牢五年罚款五十万人民币）的标示。但另一方便来说，时常留恋便利店的我们发现，日本不但没有禁塑令，而且食物往往存在过度包装的现象，一次购物往往能拿回三四个塑料袋和一堆包装纸。两周的驻地里因为创作布展的任务繁重，三位艺术家几乎天天靠着几步路附近的便利店来解决吃饭问题，因而在一周半之后，我们意识到，即时我们已经很积极地分类清理，我们仍然积压了数量巨大的废弃生活垃圾。于是最后在合作创作作品时，我们就就地取材，将闲置在工作室中的大红三角路障倒置悬挂，用放置在中间的LED灯管照亮堆叠起来的生活垃圾，构成了三个巨大的“冰淇淋”。

作为日本短暂的访客，我们无意也无法以单一作品去深刻地剖析观察到的这一矛盾背后的深层社会机制。只是觉得整洁美丽的表象之下往往也隐藏着暗流涌动的问题所在，我们也只能暂时地将所见所闻转化为浅层地作品体现。正如这个作品的名字 「国产大根」，也只是在货架上偶尔瞥见白萝卜的商品标签，而留在心里的一个印象而已。

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