Category: Portfolio

I went to a live coding workshop a few weeks ago, but it did not immediately convince me as a production tool. Compared with live coding, Ableton feels much more intuitive and efficient for the way I work. However, what unexpectedly stayed with me was not the technical side of live coding, but its visual logic. The code itself is graphic, diagrammatic, and strangely literal. Sound is not only hear but seen through language.

This influenced how I returned to my own practice in Ableton. In previous experiments, I chopped samples into Drum Racks and built an Effect Rack designed to generate continuous, non-repetitive random notes. This time, instead of treating MIDI as a neutral control system, I started drawing directly onto the MIDI clips. The visual pattern on the grid became compositional material. The result is that sound is now triggered not only by timing, but by image. The pattern becomes a graphic translation of memetic sound, and the MIDI grid becomes a kind of score-diagram hybrid.

At the same time, while researching subliminal audio for my audio paper project, I came across the concept of binaural beats. I did not apply the term intentionally during production, but I found myself instinctively adding auto-pan to one track. Later, Ingrid pointed out how effective it was. It made me realise that spatial movement in sound plays a crucial role in producing a body-mind listening experience. The sound constantly circulates inside the head to create a sense of stable instability, which is what Ingrid felt “hypnotic “.

In terms of aesthetic influence, I was thinking a lot about DJ Gurl — particularly her use of collage and glitch as both method and attitude. However, my own approach became more abrasive and less nostalgic. Rather than referencing a specific past, I wanted to construct a carnival-like compression of online sound culture: chaotic, overstimulating, seductive and exhausting at the same time. If DJ Gurl samples pop memory, I sample network fatigue. The dissociation I am interested in does not come from remembering too much, but from scrolling too fast.

Following the previous blog…

Another contradiction I found is that grounding techniques often suggest returning to the senses as a way out of dissociation — touching something cold, noticing colours, listening to ambient sound. But in reality, sensory environments themselves can also trigger dissociation.

For me, sitting with my entire family in one particular dining room makes me physically ill. The lighting, the overlapping voices, the enclosed space and the social performance required make me dizzy and nauseous. Nothing extreme is happening. No one is shouting. No argument is taking place. And yet my nervous system responds as if it is under threat.

This experience made me realise that dissociation is not always tied to obvious danger. Sometimes it is caused by atmosphere. In this context, “body-mind listening” becomes less about hearing sound and more about sensing environments. If dissociation can be produced by ordinary environments, then grounding may not come from “neutral” sensory input, but from carefully constructed sonic and spacial conditions that allow the body to feel safe again.

When I shared the prototype of my current project with Ingrid, she described the experience as both dissociative and hypnotic. She introduced me to the term body-mind listening and asked a question that stayed with me: What does it look like if the listening space reflects the genre?

We discussed DJ Gurl, and I immediately imagined a hyper-specific scene of the driver’s seat of a truck, where outside the window is a flickering dark club – people dressed in early-2000s aesthetics, dancing in strobe light.

For my own work, however, the imagined space is much quieter. I think of the rooms where I used to do homework with closed doors and controlled silence. In my work, I try to recreate such rooms. I would like to install speakers in distance for playing subtle certain door sound and footsteps sound.

Auditory processing involves both cerebral listening and body listening modes. While the cerebral mode focuses on analysis and interpretation, the body mode registers sound through physical sensations and nervous system responses. For neurodivergent individuals, this somatic experience is often heightened and less predictable, leading to intense physical reactions to sound.

At the first tutorial I had with Ingrid, she left me with a task of exploring environments that already cause dissociation and what sounds I would want to experience instead. My first reaction was quite literal: I understood “dissociation-triggering sound” as something clearly connected to trauma — a specific sound tied to a specific event. And that would be happening in a reduced listening mode, as if a single frequency or noise could fully trigger the reaction. A typical example appears in the film Girl (dir. Shu Qi), where the protagonist reacts intensely to the sound of a motorcycle or and iron door. These sounds are not traumatic in themselves, but they become unbearable because they signal the father’s return and the violence that follows. The sound acts as a warning system for the body.

I realised that my own reactions follow a similar pattern. I am highly sensitive to sounds related to doors and footsteps — not because they are loud or unpleasant, but because they carry the feeling of my mother breaking out to my space and shouting. Even certain phrases like “You are overthinking” provoke an overreaction in my body. In these cases, we are actually situated in the semantic listening mode which we are actually understanding and interpreting the meaning of an encoded message. However, for many East Asian people, trauma rarely appears as a single dramatic event. It is slow, repetitive and invisible. It exists in habits, family dynamics, silence, hierarchy, and emotional restraint. Dissociation does not only come from “bad sounds”, but from environments that constantly demand self-monitoring an emotional suppression.

John Oswald’s Plunderphonics, or Audio Privacy as a Compositional prerogative doesn’t treat sampling as a technical trick, but as a philosophical problem: when sound can be copied, cut, and replayed endlessly, what does authorship even mean anymore?

Oswald refuses the old distinction between “instrument” and “recording”. A record player in the hands of a scratch DJ is no longer a reproducer – it becomes an instrument. A sampler is no longer a neutral archive – it is a compositional engine. In this sense, plunder phonics is not about stealing records; it is about stealing listening itself and remaking it as music.

This idea resonates strongly with contemporary Chinese internet music cultures. From 土嗨(tu-hai) to 喊麦(Han-mai), from DJ Gurl’s chopped pop and 节奏的奴隶(Slave to the Rhythm) to 头七(you-qi)’s ritualised reuse of old songs, sampling here is rarely about “paying tribute”. It is about reprogramming memory. In plunderphonic practice, sound is not sacred material but more of a social surface. A 1990s Mandarin ballad, once a cliché, becomes ironic. A patriotic melody becomes glitch. A love song becomes noise. The past is remixed into contradiction rather archived.

To me, DJ Gurl’s work is more of pushing the boundary between plunderphonic and remix which somehow polishes and stylises the original but also inferences and breaks its meaning structure. In comparison, the viral trend on Douyin, mixing two iconic, almost memetic tracks together to form a new one, such as Kanye West’s Flashing Lights with Laicai , Jiafei‘s 野花香 with montagemmiau, suits better with the definition of remix.

In a culture of algorithmic sameness, interference becomes political. When every platform demands originality while supplying only templates, plunder phonics exposes a contradiction: that “newness” is often only recombination under corporate permission. The project I did in last year with internet memetic sound ended up more of a remix instead of a parody due to limited technical skills. However, I am inspired by DJ Gurl’s practice of resampling previous work and somehow plunderphonically compose them into a new one. As a result, my work would be the forth processed version of the original tracks- the first one is the original tracks themselves, the second is the remix from Douyin, and the third is my previous project.

Aural Diversity (Drever, 2021) argues that every listening body is unique in threshold, sensitivity, fatigue, perceptual focus, spatial processing and affective responses. Hearing is not a binary between “hearing” and “deaf”; it is a spectrum shaped by sensory processing differences, trauma or tinnitus, APD, neurodivergence, chronic dissociation, psychosocial stress and gendered conditioning around silence and self effacement. Thus, the auraltypical model that is deeply ingrained in society and science is a fiction.

The concept of auditory normalcy within disability studies intersects critically with theories of minority stress and gendered listening norms. While the academic field of disability studies attempts to ‘reverse the hegemony of the normal and to institute alternative ways of thinking about the abnormal’ (Davis 2006,15), disability services in China have never been prioritized. In fact, it is not only individuals with physical disability who struggle to gain appropriate respect and self-esteem in China, but the entire society lacks the awareness of neurodivergent community.

Nick Walker articulated 3 fundamental principles of the neurodiversity paradigm in Neuroqueer Heresies (2021, 19):

1. Neurodiversity–the diversity among minds–is a natural, healthy, and valuable form of human diversity.
2. There is no “normal” or “right” style of human mind, any More than there is one “normal” or “right” ethnicity, gender, or culture.
3. The social dynamics that manifest in regard to neurodiversity are similar to the social dynamics that manifest in regard to other forms of human diversity (e.g., diversity of race, culture, gender, or sexual orientation). These dynamics include the dynamics of social power relations–the dynamics of social inequality, privilege, and oppression– as well as the dynamics by which diversity, when embraced, acts as a source of creative potential within a group or society.

In recent years, Even as people are getting to realise they might be neurodivergent through internet short-videos, they remain unable to secure professional aid or official diagnoses from public institutions such as hospitals or schools. In that case, I started to think about the connection of all of these – while short-video platforms might catalyze dissociation, they simultaneously empower neurominority members to stop self-judgement within the neurotypical constraints or the pathology paradigm, instead, this awareness helps them build the confidence and recognition of being themselves.

Following the previous blog…

DJ 小女孩 is basically an internet-born persona. The difference between the real creator and the virtual girl creates a kind of suspension that feels very millennial/Gen Z. Many of us grew up making online identities—QQ names, avatars, skins—so her music feels like a reflection of that era.

A major criticism of the project is cultural appropriation. Critics argue that since Lie is not from the working class and DJ Gurl’s audience is largely middle-class, the concept of elevating “lower-class culture” is compromised by class dynamics. This perspective suggests authenticity might lie in being overlooked, or that art is naturally hierarchical. Others contend DJ Gurl’s work isn’t genuine cultural expression, hearing it as a subcultural spectacle or installation within existing structures. They argue her self-promotion and appeal to “consumable individuals” make her rebellion merely symbolic, with middle-class teenagers using the spectacle for a fleeting sense of identity.

My view is that regardless if whether her protest is “complete” or a pursuit of recognition, the work raises audience awareness. I think what draws me to her is how sincere and contradictory her sound feels. It’s ugly but beautiful, childish but mature, nostalgic but futuristic. Even when I don’t understand the structure, I feel the liveliness and the sense of liberation within it. Just as her frequent interview comment:” Nothing matters, just to have fun.”

Following the previous blog…

Massive fun would be lost if the audience is lacking the cultural context. But still, they can appreciate her work in more of a reduced listening mode. When I was struggling with the way to make this cultural background thing accessible to everyone , Ingrid pointed out it is not my responsibility to do so.

Many reviewers say she makes “土(tu)”(the local, the tacky) become “cool.” Instead of running from China’s grassroots culture the way many artists do, she turns it into something powerful and emotional. The ethos of the original spirit of culture is rare among Chinese artists but rather common among Latino and Black people. Charlie XCX revived the electronic pop of western clubs in the 2000s- DJ Gurl was doing the exact same thing and localised it. Chinese culture has been under Western hegemony for so long that it has developed a habitual inferiority complex: anything ‘local’ is invariably seen as “土(tu)”. Elements considered as “土(tu)” is actually due to the relegation to the bottom of the hierarchy of contempt by capitalist logic. Thus, many Chinese artists shy away from, and even disdain embracing and promoting the spirit of their roots. In fact, non-mainstream culture and hip-hop culture in the US were both emerged under various structural pressures, but they share complete different aesthetic comments. Why have 喊麦 (hǎn-mai) and non-mainstream culture been stifling? Because the right to speak has never been in our hands.

What surprised me the most was the integration of a large number of folk elements. Either non-mainstream pop songs in the 10s or northeastern rap with a strong northeastern dialect, combines with the highly futuristic hyperpop elements. It gives a sense of paying tribute to the past from the future. Listening to her is like walking into a chaotic childhood internet café—flashing lights, skating rinks, stolen CD mixes, forums, QQ show. But the production is strangely modern and artistic. It’s not just cheap nostalgia; it’s more like using “low” culture as rebellion.

One of her album 头七 (Tóu-qi)- named after the Chinese spiritual ritual on the first seventh day of passing, constructs the afterlife of DJ Gurl. This album offers a substantial atmospheric contrast to the 节奏的奴隶 (Slave to the Rhythm) series and features a compelling narrative arc. Inspired from Asian horror movies, she intends to critique the tragedies behind the core element “resentment” with electronic music and to infuse a sense of warmth. The album’s journey begins with DJ Gurl’s death announcement, moves into a ‘life flashing before her eyes’ montage, discussing love, the scene of masturbation and rental house, and ends with the revenge and her last grief.

Sometimes I feel myself loosing time scrolling through short videos without remember anything watched, which feels similar to dissociation. This situation is not like what happened in extreme trauma cases or PTSD, but functioning as a daily pressure-coping method, a way of avoiding the reality.

For short-video creators, certain metrics are more important than what the audiences are familiar with including likes, saves, shares and view counts. Indicators such as the 2-second exit rate, 10-second watch rate and the overall video completion rate play a more direct role in boosting video exposure and the platforms’s recommendation algorithm push. That’s why dozens of short-videos can easily catch us with its bright colours, loud transitions, half-second cuts, text overlays, meme music and surprise endings- everything is well calculated and formulated. Thus, in this dense information realm, our brains cannot process everything, so they shut down the “conscious” layer and leave us in the half-present buffering mode.

ADHD communities often say short-videos feel like a “dopamine drip”. But the reality is no narrative, no continuity, no emotional arc or no time to breathe. This combination means our brain can’t form long-term memory, which leaves us with stimulation but no substance- the perfect recipe for dissociation.

In addition, people don’t open TikTok because they’re happy. They open it because they need to escape from work, anxiety, loneliness, the pressure to be productive, or overstimulation from everything else. So short- video scrolling becomes a ritual of “I don’t want to feel this, just make the world go quiet for a second.” But it’s the kind of quietness that leaves us hollow rather than rested.

What’s more, under a solidified efficiency-oriented mindset, we (at least myself) are always multitasking: watching videos while eating, listening to something while walking, etc. Eventually, we build a strange, paradoxical survival strategy for our nervous system where silence feels threatening and noise feels comforting. That explains when we scroll through videos, our brains slips into the familiar state where it feels half awake, half absent, safe but numb.

Something I find fascinating is that we used to describe dissociation as individual pathology, but now it’s becoming a meme, a casual phrase, and a cultural symptom. It is not that everyone suddenly has PTSD or ADHD. It’s that we are collectively living in an environment designed to pull our minds apart, fragment our focus, and overload our senses.

I didn’t expect Ghost on the Stairs to hit me so physically the first time I listened to it. I knew the album was about Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), but I didn’t know that sound could simulate a kind of confusion and discomfort that felt this close to real sensory overwhelm. Meemo Comma (Lara Rix-Martin) intentionally uses clicks, distorted kicks, and uneasy loops to create a listening environment where every sound competes for attention—exactly how APD listeners often experience the world.

Tracks like “Caturday” make this tension almost bodily. The gasping, breath-like samples give the rhythm a feeling of panic, like the track itself is struggling to inhale. In “Depersonalization,” there’s a layering cello drone with layering clicks—no melody, no relief—just the pressure of constant sonic information. It reminded me of a moment on a London bus where I was near Bedford Street, wearing noise-cancelling headphones, and suddenly I heard this unbelievably heavy low frequency. I paused my music and it was still there. The drone was so overpowering I couldn’t hear anything else around me. Immediately, I thought of this album of the way it collapses internal and external noise into one overwhelming layer.

What surprised me most is that this album finally helped me understand the difference between sound art and music production in a way I had never felt before. I’ve listened to score-based works and field recording pieces before, but they never resonated so strongly. On the other hand, many underground or niche electronic tracks online feel too polished, too structured—still too close to the logic of commercial music. Ghost on the Stairs sits exactly in the middle with the expression of the way how APD cope with the world while the listenability is somehow works as a medium.

According to the album notes, Rix-Martin explores rhythm by focusing on what isn’t there—the negative space between beats. She merges speech and voice into something alien, blurring every boundary until language becomes texture and texture becomes noise. The drones feel both meditative and claustrophobic, flickering between numbness and anxiety, just like the shifting states she describes in APD.

It’s inspiring to be realising that sound can hold confusion, tension, fear, and vulnerability, not just harmony or rhythm. Ghost on the Stairs made me rethink how I listen, but also what kind of listening I’ve been avoiding. It’s unsettling, but maybe that’s exactly why it matters.

*DJ小女孩=DJ Gurl=DJ Xiaonvhai*

My first encounter with DJ Gurl was through “爱我的请爱我” (Love Me If You Love Me) from 节奏的主人（Master of Rhythm）. The track confused me before it impressed me: aggressively “土嗨”（tu-hai）and early-internet Chinese aesthetics blended with hyperpop and glitch textures, yet still gets compared to highly artistic musicians even Bjork. This paradox of being raw but refined, ironic yet sincere fascinated me and soon I found myself listening through the whole album, trying to make sense of an emotional reaction I couldn’t yet articulate.

This blog seeks to discuss DJ Gurl as an artistic project: her identity, her aesthetics, her cultural significance, and the deeper sociopolitical elements embedded within her “dirtiness.”

–

One of the first “twists” I learned is that DJ Xiaonvhai is not an actual girl. The project is created by a young Guizhou musician called 劣(Lie), who describes DJ Xiaonvhai as the place where he embraces his feminine side. The visual identity of “DJ Xiaonvhai” comes from his friend, whom he calls his “Venus.”

By making music in empty classrooms with a cheap laptop and headphones, he received loads of negative comments on his mixing technique. However, he just admitted there’s neither mixing nor fancy gear at all, because being “劣” (low-quality, same as his name) is part of the style. Somehow, this roughness becomes its own aesthetic.

–

DJ 小女孩 exploded in 2024 with her 节奏的奴隶 (Slave to the Rhythm). People describe her music as hyperpop, glitch pop, early-internet nostalgia, and even punk collage. She samples everything, not only the significant viral elements among 2000s Chinese internet: By2, Wang Rong, QQ message tones, northeast “喊麦 (hǎn-mài)”, 00s “非主流 (Chinese subculture)” culture, minority folk music, 00s pop songs like 《醉清风(Zuì-qing-feng)》and 曾轶可(Yike Zeng); but also Artists like Arca and Crystal Castle. She refused be known as “Charlie XCX/Yeule/Sophie..etc. Chinese local ver.”, instead, she claimed “DJ Gurl is just DJ Gurl.”