ENTRY # 8 : The Singing Ringing Tree

Perhaps one of the most bizarre things I have ever heard about was the Singing Ringing Tree in Burnley, northern England. I first heard about it from a British friend that I met in London once and kept in touch with. I had completely forgotten about it, and then suddenly remembered again so I went on to look it up. And what a strange piece it is indeed. It composed by many galvanized tubes of varying lengths stacked up to form a tree. It was designed by architects Mike Tonkin and Ana Liu. Imagine a waling amorphous oblique in a barren cliff’s distance. The sound as eerie as one might imagine a well of lost souls where spirits in limbo might stick like a magnet. Well that is exactly what it sounds like to me, but oddly enough the sound is soothing. Perhaps this is due to the fact that its nature causing the sounds and I realize that it is completely at random in that sense. It is not as if someone is playing badly on purpose. The hypnotic, constant drone of the Singing Ringing tree can be heard from far away as visitors approach the site. In a sense, it is an interactive piece of art since it requires our ears to listen, which draws up the crowds. It is also exceptionally a landmark art piece. This discovery has prompted me to look into other musical art pieces that sit on their own outside such as wind harps. It is baffling how a little bit of sound emanation can create a real presence, as if in the company of some celestial entity. Perhaps it is our way of being in the company of Mother nature.

ENTRY # 7: Bjork "Hyperballad" video

One slow evening at home when I was feeling like carpol tunnel syndrome, I came across this brilliant dvd that had a collection of some of director Michel Gondry’s best works. One of the videos on the DVD was the music video for Hyperballad by Bjork. I watched it and was immediately blown away! The video is jam-packed with layers and is an innovative creative concept by itself. The video begins with the sunrise over a mountainous landscape that resembles a cardboard set for a stop-motion animation of a children’s TV show. But as the light appears, it become s apparent that some of those mountain tops are actually the topography of Bjork’s face: her nose, her eyebrows, her lips and her forehead. The camera then rotates so that horizon is vertical and shows her sleeping on this cartoonish set. It then rocks back and forth above her face and shows a static flat digital green projection of an awakening Bjork singing with her eyes open. The emphasis of 3D mountain terrain blending in with her “giant” facial features really brings them out in a perspective. Adding the flat projection on top of her face creates an interesting array of layers during the camera motion. It would seem as though the projection represented what she is dreaming of, singing in her mind while she is sleeping. Yet, since she is green in the projection and static-like, it is just as fuzzy to remember as a real dream. I wonder if all these subliminal implications are coincidentally paralleled, or if the director had planned this multi-layer polyptych of the imagination on purpose? There are so many themes of lost perspective: is she up? Is she down? Is she sideways? The camera continues to flip and she is seen running with oversized shoes as though a video game character. The way we are cleverly sucked into these perspectives will always intrigue me. The fact also that this was made in 1995, I could barely believe how far ahead of its time it was.