Text by Kazunao Abe (Curator)
Who was Ryuichi Sakamoto? Viewed as an impeccable musician who was always leading the scene, he was also something of a celebrity, frequently appearing in mainstream media. Most coverage about Sakamoto goes no further than that. However, since his early days, he identified as a social activist, and this interest developed into his active role as a proponent of social design in his later years. He was also dedicated to creating artworks, and his immense contribution should be remembered by future generations. In this piece, I will introduce several of Sakamoto’s projects, focusing on those of his artworks that I was involved in realizing.
Starting with YCAM
I began to work in an artistic capacity with Sakamoto in 2005. I first met him at an opening reception at Canon ARTLAB (Canon’s media lab project that supported cultural initiatives from 1991 to 2001) in October 1998, and then I moved from Tokyo to Yamaguchi to work on opening the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), where I served as artistic director from 2003, managing the center and overseeing the programs. Since I had worked on the new performative installation polar (winner of the Golden Nica for interactive art at Ars Electronica 2001) by German artist Carsten Nicolai and Slovenian artist and activist Marko Peljhan at Canon ARTLAB in 2000, I was exploring the possibilities of creating a new work with Nicolai at YCAM. Then, from 2004 to 2005, I collaborated with Gabriele Knapstein and, Ingrid Buschmann, curators at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof, to produce Nicolai’s new large-scale sound object installation syn chron, as a co-production between the Neue Nationalgalerie and YCAM. Working with Nicolai on this project led to my profound connection with Sakamoto later on.
syn chron was first exhibited at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in February 2005. It was boldly displayed as a single piece at the center of the exhibition space. I was involved in several of the production discussions since the year before, and visited Nicolai while he was staying at Villa Medici in Rome for several months after having been awarded the Prix de Rome. At the time, he was working on developing various ideas at a conceptual level through trial and error, and I was checking in on his progress. I remember he told me that Sakamoto had been staying with him for a while until a week before. Nicolai likely met Sakamoto for the first time around 1998 in Tokyo, through an introduction from Akira Asada.
The Influence of Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto)
The collaboration between Sakamoto and Nicolai (Alva Noto) led to an unprecedented performance that integrated MIDI-converted audio recordings of a concert piano and electronic acoustics, and culminated in the duo’s first album vrioon (2002). The duo continued to work together and produced a series of five albums in total (taking the first letter of each album title creates the acronym “v.i.r.u.s.”). For their second release, insen (2005), in addition to working on the album itself, the two artists embarked on a world tour that started from London and also included Japan (with YCAM among the Japanese venues). vrioon was created based on electronic data files that were exchanged remotely in a remixing style. What is notable with insen, on the other hand, is that the two created a process in which they met in-person several times (in Berlin and Rome) and recorded the actual sounds of piano keys being struck, and the subsequent reverberations, then Nicolai electronically processed the audio and visuals along with the MIDI data.
In other words, they specifically recorded not just the sound of the piano keys being struck, which metaphysically reproduce the sequence of notes written in the score, but also the spatial and physical reverberations and fade-out after (which can be separated into different forms of vibrations: the reverberations that resonate through the body of the piano itself and those that spread from the instrument to the surrounding space), as well as the mixed resonance between the note produced by each key. This method also focused on the complex work of processing these sounds through various types of electronic manipulation. insen was thus based on an unprecedented system, and performing it on a global tour was a groundbreaking event. Simultaneously, the collaboration between Nicolai, who was already internationally recognized as a top contemporary artist and an electronic musician, and Sakamoto created an opportunity for the latter to gain recognition not just as a mainstream musician and film composer, but as an artist.
The unprecedented nature of syn chron
Nicolai’s syn chron left Berlin in February 2005, and was presented at YCAM in December of the same year. The work is massive in scale, with a maximum width of 14 meters and height of 7 meters. Inspired by the enigmatic, deformed polyhedral object that is difficult to define in Albrecht Dürer’s engraving, Melencolia I, the work forms a unique geometric shape created by cutting a polyhedron in various ways. Its body uses a newly developed material, which is used in the fuselage of airplanes, arranged in a honeycomb structure and flattened. Although very light, the material is durable and allows video projection to pass through (visible on both sides). The work is an audiovisual sculpture composed of acoustic devices and laser projection that is synchronized across six screens and six projectors but, at the same time, it also allows viewers to not only look at its outer surface, but to enter inside. Given that the floor is a full-fledged multi-channel body sonic system, the audience can viscerally experience the acoustic vibrations when lying down. The acoustics are produced not by speaker system but instead through the resonance of the structure, or wall material, itself—achieved by the installation of actuators on each surface, which produce sound that reverberates through the entire space.*2
*2 From an artistic perspective, 3D soundscape systems are fascinating tools that can transform the way we experience sound in space. These systems are designed to create an immersive auditory environment, making it possible to perceive sound not just as coming from the left or right, but as coming from specific locations around and above us. Here’s how they can be understood in the context of art: