Intermedia & Creative Work
Music creation today is a fusion of diverse media, advanced technologies, and global cultures. Beginning my journey as a film composer, I have since embraced many new platforms, tools, and skillsets that foster versatile and innovative forms of musical expression. This page showcases some of these endeavors, including the creation of a painting-transformed virtual world with interactive audio, sound maps for geospatial analysis using audio-based data, code-driven compositions and classification algorithms, as well as traditional musical pieces.
01
Digitalizing Along The River During The Qingming Festival (1635) in VR
"Along The River During The Qingming Festival" (Suzhou Ben, circa. 1635) has been transformed into an eight-scene VR environment with interactive audio. This immersive platform combines storytelling and gaming, allowing players to free explore the ancient Suzhou City and learn about the events that shaped Ming dynasty China. As the project manager, I collaborated with the VR development team at Algo Interactive in the Netherlands, and also contributed as the sound designer and soundtrack composer for this engaging experience.
#project management #npc design #sound design #c++
#game scoring
02
Water Talks:
A Sound Map Dedicated to the Baltimore Inner Harbor
This project is a data-driven study of the soundscapes around Baltimore's Inner Harbor. By investigating potential noise-influencing factors, such as navigable waterways, nearby seaports, factory facilities, and water-quality data, this map visualizes and analyzes the spatial distribution of noise across the harbor. This system also incorporates data from first-hand ambisonic field recordings and integrates them with ArcGIS and other city data released by public administrations for geospatial analysis.
#geospatial analysis #field recording #python #data analysis #soundmapping
03
12:12 Chesapeake
The Chesapeake Bay, North America's largest estuary, was the focus of a unique project I undertook last year. I traveled to 12 locations along the Maryland stretch of the bay, as indicated by the pins on the left side of the picture, and gathered a rich collection of audio recordings. These recordings then inspired the creation of a special computer music composition, where I artistically merged the sounds of water from these sites, employing innovative granular synthesis techniques to edit and enhance these sounds.
#field recording #soundmapping #maxmsp #composition
04
Return 0 Soundtrack
Directed by Brian Song, "Return 0" is an independent sci-fi film in which I served as the audio engineer (both on-set and during the ADR phase) and film composer. The story explores the mysterious death of a woman, potentially linked to an AI robot. My score was crafted to create a dynamic soundscape that accentuated the film's suspense and futuristic themes.
#film scoring #composition #soundtrack production
(Sample)
05
Outliers
Intrigued by the unique aesthetic and eerie sound of the theremin, I acquired a Moog theremin in 2020, embarking on a journey to learn what is often referred to as "the most challenging musical instrument". This fascination quickly grew into a creative vision. I decided to compose an original piece showcasing the theremin, but with an innovative twist: a theremin concerto composed in an epic, romantic style! This piece was later premiered by Peabody Symphony Orchestra in May 2022.
#theremin #composition #orchestra
06
Exploring Music Classification
This section showcases two coding projects that document my learning endeavors for solving music classification challenges while exploring musical pattern discovery. The first project employs a Support Vector Machine (SVM) model to classify music genres, and the second project delves into the use of MFCCs and chroma features for identifying musical instruments.
#machine learning #classification #audio signal processing
07
My Career As A Singer-Songwriter
As I grew up learning multiple musical instruments, the progression into songwriting became a natural outlet for my self-expression. Through songwriting, I began to capture a spectrum of emotions, from the most intense to the subtlest, along with my imagination, secrets, and yearnings.
#songwriting #singer #producer #performance
08
Three Wishes Soundtrack
Presented at the 43rd Asian American International Film Festival, "Three Wishes" (2020, directed by Caroline Xia) is a heartwarming short film that explores the fantasies of a single mother and her daughter as they imagine what they would do with three wishes. The soundtrack I composed for this film is in a light-hearted, comedic style, designed to enhance and reflect the charming dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship.
#film scoring #composition #soundtrack production
09
Ink Bamboo
Born in China and raised in America, I’ve been fusing Chinese musical elements in my composition and collaborating with artists from Asia in recent years. Inspired by the soundtrack of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I composed Ink Bamboo for Chinese artist Huiquan Xu’s exhibition of his bamboo paintings in 2021. It was featured on a continuous loop in one of the gallery showrooms during the exhibition.
#composition #asian music
10
Dream Of You
"Dream of You" is an electroacoustic composition for solo violin and live electronics. Aiming to capture a sense of “stream of consciousness,” it represents an intimate exploration of sound that moves freely and out of time and gives the soloist ample space for improvisation.
#composition #electroacoustic music
