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Media artist Shihua Ma presented an interactive audiovisual performance, New Born, at TSEH, centered on the idea of the birth of life, the Universe, and the rhythms that create movement. The performance took place as part of the venue’s anniversary celebrations.
In the autumn of 2020, at Nizhpoligraf, on the site of a former print shop, the multimedia space TSEH*opened—a project created by the company dreamlaser to advance media art in Nizhny Novgorod and across the country. The 1,000-square-meter venue became a platform for experimentation and the development of innovation in digital art.
Today, TSEH* serves as the headquarters of the INTERVAL festival and has already given residents and visitors the chance to experience works by globally renowned artists and studios such as NONOTAK, Sila Sveta, media.tribe, dreamlaser, and others. It has also presented projects in collaboration with the State Hermitage Museum, the Pushkin Museum, Anna Nova Gallery, and other cultural institutions.
On October 4, TSEH* hosted a live performance by Shihua Ma—one of China’s key media artists, a PhD in the arts, and a faculty member at the China Conservatory in Beijing. He authored the country’s first textbook on programming in the Max/MSP/Jitter environment, and his works have been shown at Poland’s AudioArt festival, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and at the ICMC, ISCM, and NIME conferences.
In New Born, the artist works with motion capture technology: his movements are read by sensors and transmitted in real time into the Max/MSP/Jitter environment. Gestures become commands, activating sound, transforming images, and launching generative processes. The performer’s body thus becomes a living instrument, and the performance becomes a system in which a human and an algorithm create music together.
The audience is treated to a four-part presentation: an explosion that gives rise to everything; the spread of life; the passage of time; and the pulsation of galaxies. To reveal each of these stages, the interaction of body, code, and space is used.
In addition to the performance, the TSEH* team, together with partners and friends, prepared a program that filled the evening with creativity. Drawing a parallel with the venue’s history, we invited the RUKA hand screen-printing workshop—right at the event, guests could print unique postcards as souvenirs. Together with the bomse team, visitors created T-shirts with unique prints. The birthday’s musical accompaniment was provided by DJ Alexander Nazin, who performed a vinyl set.