Dangerous Soybean, Vibrating Tofu

Discourse Shih-Chieh Ilya Li, Escher Tsai

The soybean (sometimes called the “great bean” in Chinese) is the main material for all kinds of bean food products, in particular tofu. In the East it is an important foodstuff and source of protein, as well as a cultural symbol. The effects of globalization have made soybean supply and demand a bargaining chip or a weapon in a  global trade war. The installation Soybean Futures converts global soybean futures index data into sound waves; the speaker’s vibrations shake the tofu on the installation, suggesting how these up-and-down fluctuations affect human life.  The installation’s production process: research and make tofu suitable for the vibration effect; extract global soybean market data, organize and analyze this material and convert it into sound waves. Changes in the global soybean futures index determine the extent of the vibration -- the greater the fluctuation in the market, the more visible the vibration of tofu, and vice versa.
The vibration of a piece of pure white, delicious tofu on a plain dark plate represents the vast history and conflict in the development of human civilization.

Market vibration to manufacturing process
The work Invisible Airs by YoHa (a collaboration between Graham Harwood of Goldsmiths, University of London, and Matsuko Yokokoji) made use of expenditure data from the Bristol City Council, converting pounds sterling into pounds of compressed air. Taking open data on topics like welfare for senior citizens and the demolition of a library, it was a transformative process turning virtual monetary figures into physical work.
The vibration changes in the soybean futures market, in Dimension Plus’s design, act as the starting point of reverse engineering, becoming the work’s source to continue to vibrate and fluctuate; the vibration is both an environmental variable in the making of tofu and also a cyclical force transformed into miniature etching.

Time to “weaponize the soybean once more”
In the links between the United States and the world’s main agricultural export economies, produce from the natural environment has been “purified” by industrialized agricultural practices, joining the capitalist countries, combed by mass-scale farming and mechanical power, becoming a link in the operating logic of capitalist nations. A self-declared socialist state with a long history of a processed bean diet as an importing country of course has its own way of using the soybean. And this, with socialist China sending out tour groups to all advanced countries but using one integrated system to transfer all surplus, has the wonder of “playing the same tune on different instruments.”
In this China-US trade war, who has ever considered what soybeans themselves might want? The soybean’s appearance on the planet was certainly not later than that of humanity as a species, why then in evolution has it always had to serve the ways of humans? When soybean became a large-scale species, its decay can bring aflatoxins leading to the destruction of organisms; why haven’t the functions of “climate change soybean,” “anti-GM soybean” or “radiation-resistant soybean” blended to give rise to a “pure natural” new form of soybean? Does not every link in the life cycle of a soybean plant have the ability to go beyond capitalism and national planning, and go its own path?
It is the moment to compose a new strategy for the great history of struggle between the human world and nature.

The Virtue of Vibration
Waveform construction that mixes mathematics and economics, and vibration that penetrates the soybean futures market, these provide the core virtues and characteristics of the processed product tofu. When integrated with a wireless oscillator, people will never be able to reference tofu, stare at tofu, or eat tofu without also accepting these internal, mixed waveform’s cyclical vibrations.
Does this mean in the age where God is dead, through science and war we have once more linked up time?
Are the litigants in the China-US trade war, under the logic whereby each is given over to capital and national interests, able out of this new war to invent some new possibilities? These vibrations should let us take all past battles, pain and amnesia related to soybean, and converge them into this new form of tofu. We all will feel low vibration, disturbance in the tofu, just overflowing a little bit. Let us see the arrival of the future.

Soybean War: Micro-overflow
A soybean tattoo seeks to transform an unseen cage into a visible locus. Just as Dongpo pork is held in shape with straw cord, the soybean immersed in a tofu state likewise needs some sort of binding to grapple with intrinsic and extrinsic reality. Now it is no longer a “simple” soybean, rather a soybean weaponized by a new strategy; taking a subtle tattoo, like a tear in the corner of Cry Baby’s eye, symbolically entering a new spacetime to battle for the planet.

危險的黃豆，震盪的豆腐

作品論述 李士傑，蔡宏賢

黃豆或稱大豆，為製作各種豆製食品的主要原料，特別是豆腐，是東方的重要食物與蛋白質來源，以及文化的象徵。隨著全球化的影響，黃豆的供需已轉換成了全球貿易戰爭中的籌碼與武器，「黃豆期貨指數」作品將以全球黃豆期貨指數的數據轉換為聲波，透過喇叭的震動影響裝置上的豆腐，意味著這些上下波動的數據將如何影響著人類的生活。 裝置作品製作過程，將研究與製作適合震動效果的豆腐，擷取全球黃豆市場數據，整理與分析資料，轉換為聲波，全球黃豆期貨市場波動指數的數值改變影響震動程度，當指數的波動越大，豆腐的震動就越明顯，反之亦然。
單純深色盤中的一塊潔白美味豆腐的震動，卻代表了人類文明發展中的巨大歷史與衝突！

將市場震盪轉化為製作過程
英國倫敦金匠學院教授 Graham Harwood YoHa 的作品《看不見的諸空氣》（Invisible Airs），將英國布里斯托市政府結算資料庫支出數值，以英鎊做單位，轉換為壓縮空氣的磅數，來幫市政府完成針對老人福利、拆毀圖書館、開放資料等特定主題，從虛擬貨幣數值到真實做功的轉化過程。
黃豆期貨交易市場的震盪變化，在Dimension Plus的深度設計規劃中，作為逆向工程（reverse engineering）的起點，成為作品持續震盪波動的來源；震盪力既是製作豆腐的環境變數，也被轉化成微型蝕刻的一個週期性的作用力。

該是「重新武器化黃豆」的時候了
在美國與世界主要農業出口經濟國家的脈絡中，農產品從自然環境被工業化種植的慣行農法所「純淨化」，進入到資本主義的國家部門，被大規模的農耕與機械力量梳理，成為資本主義的國家運營邏輯的一環。宣稱社會主義的國度，在自己悠久的豆類加工飲食歷史中，作為進口國當然也有自己挪用黃豆的方式。然而這與社會主義中國的遊客，前進各種先進國家出團觀光，但卻有「一條龍」的制度性「國家社會創來移轉所有剩餘，有著異曲同工之妙。
在這場中美貿易戰爭中，誰可曾問過黃豆他們想要什麼？黃豆在地球上的出現，並沒有晚於人類的物種，為何在演化中卻始終得服膺人類所刻畫出來的道路？黃豆成為大規模的物種時，它的腐敗可以帶來黃麴毒素導致生物的毀滅。為何沒有「氣候變遷黃豆」、「反基改黃豆」、「輻射拮抗黃豆」這些功能混合了「純自然」的新型態黃豆誕生？它的每個生命環節是否都有著超出資本主義與國族擘劃、走出自己道路的可能？
該是為新的人類世人與自然鬥爭的大歷史，譜寫新的戰略的時刻了。

震動的美德
混合了數學與經濟學的波形建構，穿透了黃豆期貨指數市場的震盪，提供了加工製品豆腐的核心美德與特徵。透過跟無線振盪器整合在一起，人們將再也無法指涉豆腐、凝視豆腐、食用豆腐而不伴隨著接受這些內在的、混合波形的週期性的震盪。
這是否意味著在上帝已死的時代，透過科學與戰爭，我們重新銜接上了時間？
中美貿易戰的當事人國家，在各自臣服於資本與國家戰事的邏輯中，又能夠從這個新的戰場中發明什麼樣的新可能？這些震動應該讓我們把所有關於黃豆的過往戰役，傷痛與失憶，收斂到豆腐這個新的形式中。我們都將感受到很低微的震動，騷動在豆腐中，只溢出了一點點。讓我們看到未來的來臨。

黃豆戰爭：微溢出
黃豆紋身，試圖把不可見的牢籠轉化成為可見的軌跡。就像東坡肉要用草繩來規訓，沈浸在豆腐狀態的黃豆，同樣需要某種束縛來與內在與外在的現實搏鬥。如今已經不再是「單純」的黃豆，而是再度被新的戰略給武器化的黃豆，將帶著微妙的紋身，彷彿 Cry Baby 眼角的一滴眼淚，象徵性地走入了為地球而戰的新時空。