Category Archives: Sound Art

Small Music – Rolf Julius Memorial – Gallery Niji

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Thanks to Atsushi Nishijima, former guest speaker in the zemi, for information about the Rolf Julius Memorial Exhibition which will be at Art Space Niji (アートスペース虹) until April 15th. Rolf Julius, who, sadly, passed away last year, was one of the earliest artists to explore relations between sounds, objects, and settings. Here is a rare and valuable opportunity to see original works by an influential sound artist right here in Kyoto. If you visit the exhibition you may have a chance to meet and talk with people who knew and worked with Julius. I met his daughter, curator and art historian, Maija Julius, gallerist  Sumiko Kumagai (熊谷寿美子) who opened Art Space Niji  in 1981, and art photographer Toshio Kuwabara (桑原敏郎) who showed a work created in collaboration with Julius. The exhibition includes works by other artists that worked with Julius, including Akio Suzuki (鈴木昭男) who is scheduled to be an invited speaker in our seminar in 2012.

Here is a photo of a work by Rolf Julius, linked directly from the Niji Gallery web site:

Access/Opening times for the Exhibition. Note here will be a symposium held at MOMAK (京都国立近代美術館) this coming Saturday afternoon.

 

Walking around in Nakanoshima

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Here’s a recording I made in Nakanoshima, on February 02, 2012, testing out a windshield for binaural microphones. If you listen with headphones you can hear some of the spatial qualities of the audio.

That’s a situationist yelp close to the beginning when a somewhat rude older couple hogging the sidewalk nearly walked into me. Manners!

The section at the end, a close-up recording of some kind of noisy machine for fixing the road, gives a strong percept of space. Here’s the section by itself:

Use headphones (or, more likely?, earbuds) to hear the binaural effect.

Les Archives du Cœur

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Christian Boltanski, with the help of visitors to the “Archives of the Heart” located on a remote part of Teshima Island, is compiling an album of human heartbeats from around the world. Participants self-record the sound of their beating heart for inclusion in an archive at a dedicated building, which opened during the 2010 Setouchi Triennale. The building also has recording rooms and a special listening room where the heart beats are played back at loud volume. I recorded the sound of my heart on March 15, 2012 when I visited Teshima Island. Here’s how the recorded audio waveform looks:

Clearly it’s not a completely quiet recording, as the microphone was held against the chest manually. Have a listen (headphones recommended):