Yan Jun:
I Bought 3000 Pieces of Pirate DVDs (sound installation with video and furniture)
Installation plan
Install a large TV wall with 20 TV sets. 20 DVD players send 20 films at same time. The videos are maybe familiar, or very strange. All taken from pirate DVD shop in Beijing and Shanghai. Action, comedy, TV series, experimental, arty - everything from the collection of any typical Chinese youth who lives in a city.
For a sound installation I don't discuss pirate/copyrights topic mainly. I changed all the audio tracks. They will be mixed randomly when they all play as loops. It's a kind of chaos of information, a sound ocean, an abstract soundscape with reality. I use two techniques to change them: first, make some part of the original sound track silent, keep others I choose; second, modulate some part in electroacoustic way, change the tune, transform sound. The second technique is so powerful in changing sonic reality, that I didn't use it too much. I promise.
(In another edition of this work, the audience will be allowed to listen to any track of an individual film by headphone.)
Who has bought 3000 pirate DVDs? Why? Does he/she have time to watch them?
We call them Wenyi Qingnian (art-culture youth). Since the 1990s, Chinese youths find a wide world of art, culture and entertainment from outside. They therefore got a bigger hunger and desire when they collected more books, films and music.
Now everything is so easy to download or buy pirated. It changed China and will continue changing, more than the summation of official education and cultural effort. Nothing can control the curiousness of human beings. They will create a new style of moral and self education. Then a new style of creation.
But the point is, do you need unlimited freedom? Do you really want to know everything? Information overdose makes human consciousness and perception change day by day. Not only Chinese youth, but all contemporary people, are processing so much information. If we regard reality as the summation of all information received by brain, then "World" just depends on how we code the information.
David Tudor said "more is more". Now let's re-code them. It is more, or less.
When it was presented at Media City Seoul (The 4th Seoul International Media Art Biennale) in October 2006, the organizing team didn't provide anything as they promised except an open space, several small TVs and a pair of fake speakers. On the 3rd day of the grand opening, this installation was finished with new speakers and other hardware.
Here the 3 tracks are randomly rendered by computer: download 3000 Pirate DVDs demo 2 MP3 (14.2 MB) download 3000 Pirate DVDs demo 3 MP3 (16.2 MB) |
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