Zendai Museum of Modern Art/Jinshan Beach, China as part of the Museum’s
Intrude 366: Art & Life www.intrude366.com/

The work involved 800 hand-printed Kongming lanterns launched into the sky in a particular sequence to spell out the words Here Comes the Sun in ASCII programming code. Unfortunately, we had terrible weather for the event; but he launch of each set of lanterns had an initial sound at the moment of take off, intermingling with the sound of the next letter (symbolized by the number of lanterns) launched.

ASCII is the programming code use by most computers to assign a number to each keyboard function. This can be thought of as a modern-day equivalent to the pervious means of submitting data electronically - Morse code or the ancient Chinese practice of writing messages to send to the one’s ancestors. The inspiration for the piece came from the Chinese military strategist Zhuge Liang, or Kongming (Three Kingdom Period) and his “public performances”

Zhuge Liang, arguably, created some of China’s first public art ‘performances’ as a tool to thwart off an enemy: Threatened with an invasion, Zhuge Liang opened his fortress gates and calmly sat playing music, rendering his fortress vulnerable. When the enemy arrived, they could not believe their eyes or ears and, thus, thought that this must be a trick and retreated. Still, others say it was because the music was so beautiful that the enemy was so moved that they could not attack.. Later, again, Zhuge Liang was threatened with war, so he sent a spy to his enemies’ camp to substitute the maps of his land with false maps, locating his fortress where it was not. Where the maps showed this false fortress, he sent up flying Kongming lanterns (which were often used for signaling), tricking the enemy to believe that that location was indeed his fortress, allowing Zhuge Liang’s army to take his enemy from behind.
Here Comes the Sun – whose title references the Beatles’ song “Here comes the Sun” - will re-inact these 2 famous public art works. In addition, out of respect for the recent losses from the earthquake, the artists have adapted the piece to send a Chinese blessing, roughly translated as “Here Comes the Sun.”