DOI: https://doi.org/10.51191/issn.2637-1898.2022.5.9.136
Fan Jia
University Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia /
Faculty of Music,
Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University, China
Lee Chie Tsang Isaiah
INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology, Issue 9, 2022
Main Theme of the Issue: Fighting for Attention: Music and Art on Social Media
Publisher: INSAM Institute for Contemporary Artistic Music, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Section: THE MAIN THEME
Abstract: This paper discusses my recent erhu solo project Fireworks which is a musical analogue that I analyse using Chuang Tzu’s blurred aesthetics to investigate a musical space between determinacy and indeterminacy in Chinese national music. What is particularly interesting to me about this blurred musical space is that it is not polarised around an idea of ‘the invisible’ or ‘the indefinable’ as pure negative space but can be perceived in a more graduated area between positive and negative, fixed and unstable. Behind this concept of musical space is the creation of an ‘interpenetrated’ identity, a fluctuating boundary between opposing qualities, or the subject’s and object’s identities. In seeking to find structural analogues congruent with the concept of the blur, the challenges and focus of this work rely upon the architecture of ambivalent states, which include string timbre and frequency, the relations of determinacy-indeterminacy, space and spacing architecture, performative indeterminacy and fragments, and silence. This focus of this research into a musical engagement with blurred aesthetics has allowed me to examine how I might approach musical structure, specifically by the framing of events or phenomena, and by expanding my musical language and creative ideas.
Keywords: Blurred, Indeterminacy, Musical space, Harmony, Erhu.
10. INSAM Journal 9_Jia and Isaiah_

ISSN 2637 – 1898
On the cover: Additive Duality by Joe Beedles, photo: Matteo Favero © IKLECTIK
Design and layout: Milan Šuput, Bojana Radovanović
The Journal is indexed in:
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CEEOL – Central and Eastern European Online Library
RILM – Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale
ERIH PLUS – European Reference Index for the Humanities

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