Soundscape Cruise

Participants in this educational program learn about the relationship between sound and space, by sharing the “images” that sounds inspire in them. The workshop is offered online as part of the “Yamaguchi’s Future Classes” series of events showcasing educational programs developed at YCAM.

Participants first collect a variety of sounds that evoke all kinds of images.By listening to, comparing, and exchanging thoughts on each other’s collected audio, they rediscover the characteristics of familiar spaces in their daily-life environments. Through these activities, this workshop deepens our understanding as to what kinds of information we usually extract from sounds, and how sounds can work as a source of imagination.

The inspiration for this program came from ”Sound Mine,” a YCAM co-produced concert piece performed in 2019 by voice artist Miyu Hosoi and internationally renowned young percussionist Shun Ishiwaka, along with a related “Backstage Tour.” These events were based on the concept of employing sounds and reverberations that arouse in the audience a variety of memories, and thereby present a novel approach to sounds that we usually listen to quite casually. The workshop was developed together with Hosoi, inspired by the idea to remodel the ”Sound Mine” concept into something that can be experienced in a rather familiar setting. Participants pick up sounds at familiar locations, which the entire group then listens to carefully, before each of them expresses the scenarios, objects or ideas those sounds inspired in them, through pictures, patterns, or other forms of non-verbal communication. Based on this, the participants finally engage in a discussion and dialogue on the types of information that we obtain from sounds. This is the first ever educational program at YCAM to be offered online, for which we chose a video conferencing system as a platform. Anyone with an appropriate technical setup can join from their own familiar settings, encounter by way of sound the individual environments of other participants, and see and listen to the soundscapes of their daily lives.

In addition to the characteristics of sound as a medium, the focus here is also on the properties of the human sense of hearing and spatial perception, and on possibilities regarding creative expression through sound.