平仄 Ping Ze

This project investigates the classical Chinese ci poetry, and explores how to translate abstract literary and phonological concepts into visual elements, in order to make them more accessible to the audience regardless of their knowledge of the Chinese language. 

In Middle Chinese, all of the Chinese characters are divided into two groups based on their tones: ping, literally “level”, meaning no pitch changes when the character is pronounced; and ze, “oblique”, meaning with pitch changes when pronounced. This idea of ping vs. ze is especially important to the ci poetry, because a series of metric patterns, referred to as "tunes", regulate the tone of each character in a poem: whether it needs to be a ping character or a ze one. Each of these tunes is associated with a title, called cipai, which serves as a code name, since usually the title does not describe the tune itself and has nothing to do with the content of the actual poem. 

This project includes a series of posters that seek to visually represent the pingze patterns of a selection of tunes, as well as the disconnection between the tune titles and their meanings. A system of stripe patterns was developed based on the symbols that represent Yin and Yang in I Ching, in order to visualize the phonological patterns of pingze in each tune. The height of each poster is thus determined by the character-count of each tune. The tune title is then written in cursive calligraphy, to render them illegible and abstract, and thus distant them from their meanings. Additional information is also provided regarding the origins of the tune titles.

这组作品以宋词词牌以及汉语音韵中的平仄为研究题材，探究如何将抽象的文学及声韵概念转化为具象的视觉元素，从而让不同语言文化背景的观众都能从不同角度领略汉语文学及语言的魅力。

在中古汉语中，所有的汉字会根据它们的声调被分为“平”或“仄”两类。“平”即没有音调变化，而“仄”即有音调变化。平仄的概念在宋词中尤为重要，因为宋词中的一系列词调规定了一首词中每个字的平仄。这些词调都有各自的标题，便是词牌。虽然这些词牌名都会作为词题的一部分出现，但是他们通常既不描述词调的格律，也和词的实际内容无关，仅仅是作为一个代号而已。

这组作品包含了一系列的海报，以视觉元素来描述一系列词调中的平仄变化，以及词牌所表达的意象和实际内容相脱离的关系。其中各词调的平仄用一套基于《易经》中阴阳爻的条形图案来表示，用以描述各词调中的平仄变化。每张海报的长度也因此由各词牌的长度而定。各词牌名则用草书书法书写，从而将汉字抽象化，将其表达的意象从文字中抽离。海报中也加入了额外信息用以阐述各词牌名的来源和典故。