Michele Cheng on her piece “Speeddating”
Watch my interview with US-based new music composer Michele Cheng on her piece “Speeddating”. It is a multimedia work including ambisonics, a three-screen video, graphics, and a hand puppet, talks about Asian American self-image and online dating culture. The fictional narratives cover topics such as colonization, immigration, multiraciality, and sexuality based on real stories, in-person interviews, and sources including dating websites’ slogans, Asian Bodies That Proudly Defy An Archetype from HuffPost, and Noёl Alumit’s Rice Room: Scenes From a Bar. This project is a collaboration between media artist Simona Fitcal and soprano Anna Elder.
Watch interview:
Watch piece “Speeddating”:
Photo:
About Michele Cheng:
Michele Cheng, a 1.5-generation Taiwanese American, is an interdisciplinary composer intertwines diverse media such as music, experimental theatre, and puppetry to engage with social issues and cultural identities. Her works have been performed at MATA Festival (NYC, US), CCRMA (Stanford, US), ICMC (Santiago, CL), ISSTA (IE), SICMF (Seoul, KR), Sonorities (Belfast, UK), SEAMUS (US), NYCEMF (NYC, US), eavesdropping (London, UK), New Music Gathering (Portland, US), Casa Obscura (Montréal, CA), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon (Dijon, France), National Theater and Concert Hall (Taipei, Taiwan), among others. She received commissions from JACK Quartet, National Sawdust, White Snake Project, I Care If You Listen; grant from New Music USA; and a scholarship from Atlantic Center for the Arts.
