​The Typist
​performance at C4 Gallery, Los Angeles, Jan. 19th, 2025
Language breathes in sound. It carries weight, rhythm, and silence—before it is understood, before it is spoken.
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In this performance, words transform. A Max/MSP patch I developed listens, translates, and reimagines: speech becomes binary, binary becomes rhythm, and rhythm becomes music.
"Jabberwocky", a poem already untethered from conventional meaning in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland universe, undergoes this metamorphosis across languages. Each translation is mapped onto a distinct sonic structure, preserving meaning yet reshaping its form. As syllables scatter, reform, and collide, the poem is no longer just text—it is a body of sound, where translation is not loss, but music.
Created for Jiayun Chen’s solo exhibition opening, this work explores the tension between translation, the friction of meaning, and the magic within its transformation.