I went to Ambient Kyoto's installation and Ryoji Ikeda's "Ultrasonics" (live) in Kyoto over the weekend, and it was a very stimulating experience, so I will try to write about it while my memory is still fresh.
Ambient Kyoto
This exhibition is being held at two locations in Kyoto. I went around from the former Health and Welfare Center near Kyoto Station.
In this exhibition, Seiichi Yamamoto's music and Akito Sengoku's visual works were a sticking point.
The drones seamlessly shifted between restrained beats and abstract sounds. I was not the only one whose body was involuntarily shaken by the kicks that echoed from afar in places. The visuals were also wonderful, synchronized and resonant with the sound, and scattered with unpredictable elements, just like in the natural world. Especially the first ripple effect. It was a very clever direction that showed only fragments of the ripples spreading out without putting the center of the ripples on the screen.
And async-immersion 2023 by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani.
The long and large screen was set up in the vast space of the former printing house in the basement of the Kyoto Shimbun Building, a space that evokes time and history. It is worth coming just to experience this space.
In a space where async echoes, images and photos of waves, rocks, alpine flowers (perhaps), etc. are projected on a screen. These images are generated from the lines that appear when objects move at high speed (can you feel them?) and disappear from the edges as lines. The images arise from the lines and become lines again, disappearing from the edges. The contrast between the still and moving images and the lines seemed to express universality, change, and the flow of time. It is a very restrained expression, yet it is vivid.
The power of async and the flow of time that this place evoked together created a different experience.
Ryoji Ikeda "Ultrasonics".
This live performance was held at the Rohm Theater. I was numb. Not only mentally but also physically.
I had experienced the feeling of having my stomach shaken by heavy bass music in clubs many times before. However, at this concert, my stomach was shaken by the kick and at the same time my torso was made numb from the soles of my feet by the bass. Why does that happen? Is it the placement of the speakers? Is it the strangeness of frequency control?
The sound synchronized with the geometric images, the body numbed by the vibrations, it was truly a different dimension. Definitely a memorable live performance.
About Sound and Image
Since I started uploading videos to Youtube in a small way, I inevitably began to think about the relationship between sound and images. This time, I was especially happy to see async-immersion 2023. I used to think that if I wanted to add images, I would use moving images rather than still images because of the amount of information they contain, but I was able to change my mind after seeing this work.
When we look at a picture with sound, it is not a question of whether it is a moving image or a still image, but the amount of information contained in it that attracts us. This can be based on the amount of visual information (number of pixels, frame rate, size of the screen), but even a simple composition or line drawing with little visual information can be said to have a lot of information if we can sense some background or story in it.
I was impressed by the fact that the sound and images, which had been stripped of so many elements, could create a space in which I wanted to stay immersed indefinitely.
Ambient Kyoto 2023 will be held until December 24. If you are in Kyoto, why not extend your visit?
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