Lin Chenyou remembers an experience playing the guqin song "Youlan" in Germany, the sound of the piano was quiet, and a German audience member on the stage burst into tears. At that time, she deeply felt that "good art can touch people's hearts and make people empathize."
As a representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage guqin art, Lin Chen has been engaged in the research and dissemination of the guqin for 30 years, until this year, there have been new attempts. For the first time, she experienced the use of games as a carrier and the harmony with the sound of the piano with the game characters, so as to spread the rhyme of the Chinese guqin to the wider public, and expressed the meaning of thousands of years of unbroken zhiyin with a song "Flowing Water".
This scene appeared in the program of "Zhiyin Flowing Water" of the "2021 Co-creation Night", the ink dan qingshan water painting scroll slowly unfolded, and the sound and painting complemented each other, all of which highlighted the beauty of Chinese classics.
The ink painting scroll was written and guided by Liu Bo, a national first-class artist and doctoral supervisor of the National Academy of Arts, and co-created with the King Glory Project Team. "Ink painting is undoubtedly the language of China, how to let young people have more contact with Chinese classics, games are a way to make people like to hear." Liu Bo said.
In recent years, cultural self-confidence and national self-confidence have been continuously enhanced, traditional Chinese literature has been inherited and developed, and new formats and phenomenon-level digital products have been spawned. These unique new cultural carriers will give more people the opportunity to contact and love traditional Chinese culture. Chinese culture is also showing its unique charm to the world in new forms.
How to tell the Chinese story to the world is a problem that Liu Bo has been thinking about. Having experienced many lectures and exhibitions at overseas institutions of higher learning, he has always regarded the dissemination of traditional Chinese culture as one of his missions, "I paint Chinese paintings, understand Chinese culture, and the ultimate purpose is also to spread."
The reason why he embarked on the road of art, he confessed, is inseparable from the experience of reading comic strips when he was a child, and the sophisticated paintings convey rich literary and historical knowledge, which makes him thirsty for knowledge. "Little Tadpole Finds Mother" and "Big Trouble in Tiangong" and other very Chinese-style animations are also his precious childhood memories. When he grew up, he learned that there were many excellent painters at that time who used the best methods and the greatest efforts to adapt and create comic strips.
Seeing that foreign film and television works with Chinese elements such as "Kung Fu Panda" and "Mulan" are hot in the international market, he has a sense of urgency, "We do not lack stories, but does the ability to tell stories still need to be improved?" Can our stories be more interesting, more in-depth, more tasteful? ”
An Israeli professor once told him that a Chinese artist taught cursive calligraphy and interpreted it as "like a pile of grass," and Liu Bo was indignant after hearing it. "If, in order to make foreigners sound relaxed, but in fact spread wrong and vulgar ideas, then the spread of Chinese culture is actually a kind of harm."
He realized that learning to tell stories in each other's language is only the basic skill of communication, but this does not mean that others love to listen and understand. "When talking about Chinese painting and Chinese calligraphy, we should not only stick to pen and ink and form, but also pay attention to explaining its cultural connotations, so that the audience can understand and understand it more deeply."
A white-haired old Australian man once asked him why there were only two peacock feathers painted by the Bada Shanren, and the big stones he stood on were also up and down. He explained that because the Bada Shan people were once the imperial nobles of the Ming Dynasty, after the fall of the country, their lives changed dramatically, and they expressed their inner feelings through pen and ink. The other party listened and suddenly realized.
Many foreigners like to ask him, "How long have you been painting this picture?" He would patiently tell the other side that Chinese paintings usually finished quickly, but this was not out of haste. The characteristic of Chinese painting is not to apply layers of paint, there is no need to paint all the colors on the canvas, but will leave a lot of blanks. It is an interactive space for the creator and the viewer to imagine.
In his view, Chinese culture has lasted for thousands of years, and it is on the basis of continuous integration of foreign cultures that it constantly innovates and goes out of its own trajectory. As a communicator, first of all, we must truly understand what Chinese culture is, and then spread it in a way that people in the target country like to hear, and not be afraid of discussion, exchange and collision, "this is a way for a real Chinese culture to go out."
Lin Chen has similar feelings about how to better spread Chinese culture to the outside world. She has her own insistence when playing for foreign audiences. She pays attention to the rhythm of the rhythm, leaving a lot of space between the tone and the tone, and does not fill the "virtual" part completely. She explained to them that paying attention to the transformation between virtual and real is an expression with Chinese characteristics, and anyone who can understand it will find it very distinctive.
In the 1980s, the guqin was not a popular art, and it even faced the dilemma of extinction. Many pianists of the older generation, including her father, spontaneously shouldered the sense of mission of inheriting the guqin. When he was a child, he saw that the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where his father was located, set up a "Guqin Music Rescue Team" to actively excavate, rescue, protect and inherit guqin art, and Lin Chen also heard about it.
In 2003, Chinese guqin art was included in the second batch of "Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Mankind" by UNESCO, and in 2006, it was included in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of China. The guqin has received more attention from people.
But whether it is lonely or lively, Lin Chen always believes in the principle of "self-crossing people". When she and her colleagues go around the world to spread the guqin, she pays more attention to music than to stories. "When we encounter the opportunity to spread, we will try our best to let them connect with the guqin, and then slowly spread it layer by layer."
In her opinion, the charm of the guqin goes without saying, as long as you like it, you have a feeling of obsession. "Its very existence can infect a lot of people."
The question of whether to choose Chinese art or Western art was placed in front of the young Liu Bo.
Liu Bo said that he seems to have taken this road with determination, but in fact, it is not a smooth road. In the 1980s, a large number of ideas and art forms from the West entered China, and he was also attracted by the novelties of the Department of Oriental Art at Nankai University, chasing various avant-garde lectures and visiting the most impactful exhibitions.
The two mentors, Fan Zeng and Ye Jiaying, gave him the power to anchor, they have an independent and complete ideological and artistic system, and they will not be easily swayed by the outside world. Liu Bo felt that "instead of learning second- and third-hand Western art concepts and artistic styles in China, it is better to accept the guidance of The most orthodox Chinese poetics, literature or art."
This experience brought him harvest and accumulation, he described it as "like in a building, you must enter this building, first understand how many floors, several rooms, sit in your own office, in order to rest assured, so as not to be very blind."
These are also reflected in his creative concepts. Drawing inspiration from a large number of historical relics such as caves, tomb murals, stone carvings and golden stone characters, he paints ancient and modern figures in ink paintings, which are quite ancient and have modern aesthetic awareness.
In recent years, Liu Bo has paid more attention to the impact of new carriers on the spread of traditional Chinese culture. In his view, the important thing is not to stick to a certain artistic concept or form, but to communicate with a more open mind with newer means, media, and new traditions.
Although he didn't have the habit of playing games, he found that games made many people feel quite engaged, "a way to make more people happy." If you want to use such tools and carriers to spread Chinese culture, you should have your own original game background and game image.
For this reason, this year he tried for the first time to work with a young game team to "see if they have a more effective way to spread traditional Chinese culture to a larger scope and let more people know the charm of Chinese culture."
For Lin Chen, the inheritance and innovation of guqin art has never been a pair of contradictory concepts, and two groups of people have always made efforts in their respective fields. A group of people "keep the tradition", better understand and interpret the core of the tradition, and provide gains for the music and society of the moment. Another group of people fused the guqin with various musical forms to create a new form, "so that the guqin art will continue to try to break through and touch the boundaries of the expression of the guqin art."
Previously, as an inheritor, Lin Chen spent more time looking back at the past and studying traditions, but she always had an idea in her heart, hoping to use the ancient piano tradition and fingering articulation in the works that are more modern, "when playing a new thing, you still convey the characteristics of piano music."
This time, she found Glory of Kings and saw the cooperation between them as "a rare opportunity". On the one hand, she realized that digital communication is an expression that is more acceptable to the public in this era, "maybe I can change my way to make everyone more able to understand"; on the other hand, after listening to the new song based on the ancient song "Flowing Water", she felt that she could "present what I have always wanted to do in my heart."
Lin Chen's cooperation with King glory began in April this year, and she was invited to Chengdu to tell the history and knowledge points of guqin to the art, audio, operation and marketing teams of "Glory of Kings".
At the beginning of the exchange, one of the most common questions discussed by Lin Chen and the young people of the Internet company was" "What does Zhiyin want to express?" In her opinion, "alpine flowing water" tells a very Chinese story, Zhong Zi period can understand the sound of Boya's piano, not only to understand the sound of the mountain, flowing water and other figurative things, but to feel what Boya feels and thinks in his heart, and to know more about Boya and his people. "Pursuing the vision of Zhiyin, every piano person, and even every literati will have such expectations."
This is also different from Western classical music, which centers on the "composer". Traditional Chinese piano music centers on the "performer", and even after a thousand years, the name of the composer is no longer known, and the version of the performer can still be passed down from generation to generation, making people listen to it like a former friend.
In order to better adapt to the background music of modern arrangements, Lin Chen used Mr. Guan Pinghu's performance of "Flowing Water" as the material, and integrated the "Flowing Water" version of the three famous guqin artists in a 3-minute clip to "maximize the traditional vocabulary of the guqin in the current music".
In the final CG video related to the skin of "Zhuang Zhou Alpine Flowing Water", when she saw Zhuang Zhou riding the "Kunpeng" made of landscape pine, even she herself was touched by the majestic momentum of the combination of sound and painting.
Complementing the sound of the piano is the ink landscape painting with Chinese characteristics. Mountains towering and surrounded by white clouds, layers of landscape paintings slowly unfold as ink-colored butterflies flutter. The game image of "Zhuang Zhou" is also different from the previous more cartoon style, combined with the image of classical painting, the costume has the style of the Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the color uses the artistic technique of leaving blank.
Liu Bo wrote the word "trumpet bell" with a large seal, and wrote two qin inscriptions with the pre-Qin shu and xingshu, and digitally presented behind the "trumpet bell" virtual guqin played in the skin of Zhuang Zhou's "alpine flowing water" skin in the game. In this way, he hopes to "detract from the charm of the classic style of traditional calligraphy as much as possible."
What makes Lin Chen feel relieved is that the ultimate pursuit of details in the early stage has not been ignored by the audience. In the early stage of co-creation, out of the habits of musicians, she proposed that the fingering method of Zhuang Zhou when playing the guqin in the animation must correspond to the music tone one by one, not fast or slow, so the video creation team changed several drafts. In the barrage, seeing someone commenting that "the hand is pointed" and "very hearty", she feels as if she has also met "Zhiyin".
After this cooperation, Liu Bo found that his previous concept had changed a lot. In his view, although the current Chinese contemporary art styles, especially animation, still cannot avoid imitation or be influenced by foreign art forms, in the process of communicating with the creative team and colliding ideas, he found that this generation of young people not only has a huge passion for Chinese traditional culture and art, but also can study, learn and use Chinese elements so carefully that the future will eventually go out of its own way.
He remembered that 60 years ago, under the artistic guidance of Li Keyan, Cheng Shifa and other famous Chinese painters, the "ink animation" "Little Tadpole Finds Mother" has become an enduring treasure of Chinese art. "We have to have our own artistic language and can't always follow behind others. In the end, Chinese culture and art will come out of a different style from other cultures and arts. ”
He believed that the road had not been broken.
Source: Guangming Network WeChat