Rrmea (尔玛) is a writing system created by younger generations of the Qiang people, an ethnic minority in China, to record a culture that remained entirely oral for thousands of years. The Sheep of Rrmea is a multimedia installation inspired by Qiang ritual traditions and historical cosmology. Combining light, language, animation, and a sheep skin drum, the work traces the continual transformation of cultural memory across materials, generations, and technologies.

At the center of the installation is an original poem imagining a sheep consuming sacred texts before its skin is transformed into a ritual drum. The spoken poem is translated into waves of light, visualizing sound as a living archive that moves between voice, body, and image. Each transformation gives the story a new form while carrying traces of those that came before.

The work reflects on how cultural memory continues to take shape through acts of transmission, transformation, and reinterpretation. Oral traditions evolve into written language, ritual gestures resonate through digital media, and ancestral knowledge continues to unfold through contemporary artistic practice. The work follows the continual transformation of oral knowledge into language, sound into light, ritual into moving image, and ancestral memory into contemporary artistic practice. Through these evolving forms, culture continues to live, grow, and take on new meanings.

“Rrmea”（尔玛）是中国少数民族——羌族年轻一代创造的一种书写系统，旨在记录一种延续数千年的纯口述文化。《尔玛之羊》（The Sheep of Rrmea）是一件受羌族仪式传统与历史宇宙观启发的装置艺术作品。该作品融合了光影、语言、动画及羊皮鼓等元素，追溯了文化记忆在不同物质载体、世代更迭与技术演变中的持续转化。装置的核心是一首原创诗作，描绘了一只羊在被制成仪式用鼓之前吞食神圣经文的想象场景。诗歌的朗诵声被转化为光波，将声音具象化为一种在人声、身体与影像之间流动的鲜活档案。每一次转化都赋予了故事新的形态，同时也承载着过往形态的印记。该作品探讨了文化记忆如何通过传承、转化与重新解读的过程不断成形：口述传统演变为书面语言，仪式动作在数字媒体中产生共鸣，祖先的智慧则在当代艺术实践中持续延展。作品呈现了从口述知识到语言、从声音到光影、从仪式到动态影像、再从祖先记忆到当代艺术实践的持续转化过程。正是通过这些不断演变的形态，文化得以延续生命、生长并焕发出新的意义。