sound tectonics installation #7

Unveiled at volume 7 of the “sound tectonics” series of sound installations at the YCAM building’s Patio, is a sound installation by DJ 1729 and musician Sugai Ken.

In addition to her work as a DJ in the club scene, 1729 has recently expanded her field of activity, to include also concerts of contemporary music among others. Sugai Ken has been focusing on the reproduction of the sounds of birds and insects by electronic means, while also engaging in wide-ranged musical activities that include works based on Japanese folklore, which he has been invited to performa also overseas. The new piece they present this time is a sound installation that fills the Patio with a soundscape modeled around that motif of “weather” as an atmospheric phenomenon shaped by fundamental cosmic effects.

Comment from the artists

A passage in the widely popular gardening book “Tukiyama Niwazukuriden,” written by Kitamura Enkin in the mid-Edo period, says something along the lines of “when being too elaborate in creating various patterns in order to portray a landscape in an interesting way, it happens that the aspect of weather gets lost, the result of which is often a rather crude rendition of an uncertain outer appearance.” This is where the title of this work comes from.

Rather than using the term “weather” in its common meaning as describing things like wind and rain caused by certain states of the atmopshere, here it is used to refer to a phenomenon shaped through fundamental cosmic effects, and I think it also reflects a consideration of all things that we can never fully grasp, including the transitions that occur in time and history. Now what does it mean for us when these things gets lost?