尘惦 (chéndiàn); after scans and lingering dust

尘惦 (chéndiàn); after scans and lingering dust
Hong Shu-ying

Published by Temporary Press
Edition of 450
44 pages, Risograph printed in Black
210 × 297mm, comb bound

ISBN 978-981-18-9583-8

Watching dust settle is to witness time passing.

The repeated photocopying of musical scores as a way to share them creates notations of an almost immaterial medium – of dust and artefacts, of music and time. With hand-copied notations, each line and stroke is an imprint and memory left by different people. These traces are read and re-read by others, imbuing a new layer of colour and texture. The repeated acts of copying, reading and sharing slowly erode the previous markings, just like how time wears things down into seemingly minute and homogeneous dust.

-Text written by the artist

Each book contains a selection of 43 images from a total of 127 images that are made using hand-copied (Chinese music) scores from the artist’s archive. These scores were processed through scanning, enlarging, colour inversion, and Risograph printing. The complete set was exhibited as an installation in Taichung, Taiwan in 2024, accompanied by four compositions and improvisation performances by Ng Wei Xuan (dizi) and Hong Shu-ying (erhu) that is available for readers to listen online.

The book is top-bound with two pieces of stiff board backing that allows it to stand like a calendar, where the book can be ‘read’ very slowly over a year.