Prologue: Two parallel stories told by a single Sun
Sun Wukong is born from a stone that sits at the peak of the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. The stone receives nurture from the earth (yin) and the heaven (yang), coming to produce a stone egg. When light and wind pass through the egg, the egg transforms into a stone monkey.
Sun Xiaotao is born two weeks early in Liaoning, China, on October 18th, 1996, at Sheng Jing Hospital.
Sun Baodong, Zhang Haoyue, and Sun Xiaotao plant a dwarf peach tree in the backyard of their first home in Morrisville, North Carolina.
Sun Wukong eats a Peach of Immortality while appointed as the “Guardian of the Heavenly Peach Garden” in the Heavens.
The earliest peach fossils are discovered in Southwest China in 2015, dating back over 2.6 million years ago. The historic fossils appear to be nearly identical to the pits of modern peaches.
Sun Wukong is imprisoned for 500 years on Earth under a mountain formed from the hand of Buddha.
Sun Xiaotao changes her name and assumes a new identity for the next 20 years.
The Origin of the Monkey King
2025
3 simultaneous events on Mulberry paper:
Drawing of a 2.6 million year old fossilized peach pit
Copper wire topographic map of the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit
Granular synthesis of the sound of Sun Wukong exploding from a rock, looped
Epilogue: Two Suns Meet a Smiliar Fate
A magnet, cemented into the visage of a peach pit I ate last month (April, 2025).
(Viewers are encouraged to activate and explore the drawing through the cement-casted magnet. By hovering the magnet gently over the drawing, portions of the copper wire topography become sonified to play back the the one second sound clip of Sun Wukong exploding from a rock that his been processed through granular synthesis.)
