2021
-An interactive installation using generated sounds created from past weather forecast data
-A performance with agar.
Exhibition location: Tsuyama City, Okayama Prefecture, Japan.
This work is based on research related to the artist’s hometown and is structured in two parts. The first part is an interactive installation using generated sounds created from weather forecast data over three years, condensed into seven hours, from the time spent frequently in the mountains. The second part is a performance in which six adults flip 190 liters of agar, cooked in a traditional kettle. The kettle, a vintage enamel bathtub used in the 1980s for boiling water with firewood, was brought to the gallery’s backyard. The 190 liters of agar were cooked, allowed to cool and solidify over two or three days, and then flipped as part of the performance.
About the Work
This work is an experimental, interactive installation that recreates the memories of my childhood in the present space. At my grandparents’ house in the mountains, the process of drawing filtered mountain water from a filtration system into the bath and heating it with firewood we chopped ourselves was part of our daily routine. The coldness of the bathroom, the crackling sound of the wood, the heat touching the cold air and turning into water droplets, the scent of burning firewood—these were the sensory elements of the space. Above this space, I felt a kind of layered atmosphere that contained both heat and cold. This sensation may have come from the geological layers I often observed in the mountains, or the parallel lines marked by the changing water edges of the riverbank. It was the feeling of time accumulating in layers. As I reflected on the materials changing in the city due to modernization and depopulation, and the eroded mountains, I wanted to capture the sensation of time returning in layers, making it visible to others in a tangible space.
Concept: Installation
The installation is divided into two rooms separated by a Fourier. The room with the large window is the “Hot Room,” and the dark room without windows is the “Cold Room.” In the center of each room, a drum can is installed, acting as a “window” through which the time, smells, and temperature of the two rooms are exchanged. In the bright room, the sound representing water, generated from weather forecast data from 1987 to 1990, flows quietly. A distance-sensing device is installed on the drum can in the bright room, so when someone approaches, the generated sound representing fire is added to the water sound from the dark room. The dark room is filled with the “heat” flowing through the window and the scent of cypress wood, used for kindling, fills the air. In the bright room, I recreated the space where we used to chop firewood and tend the fire, placing cypress wood I had gathered from the mountains into the drum can. The sound flowed from speakers installed at the bottom of each drum can.
> In the bright room
a drum, distance sensors, Raspberry Pi, a speaker, WiFi cable, japanese cypress essential oil, ceder branch, a block wood board cut into a circle, rusted metal rod, cotton rope(10m, ø10mm), four blocks, aluminum sheet
> In the dark room
a drum, speakers, sounds generated from past weather forecast data, WiFi cable, a black styrol board cut into a circle, light, humidifier, japanese cypress essential oil, oil heater
From a barrel, you can hear two difference sounds. One was a continuous generated sounds condense the past weather forecast data of 3 years (1987 - 1990) into 8 hours. The sound was inspired by rain or waterdrops. Another sound was played in the dark room (B) only when someone approached a drum in the bright room (A). The sound became louder while somone approached the drum in the bright room (A), and the sound changed from water dropping into the crackling of flames. The water sound was generated by using the precipitation and average pressure data of past weather forecasts, and the fire sound was generated using the sunshine duration and maximum temperature data.
> On the courtyard
Agar gelatin on the wooden bathtub lid
> On the backyard
Grandparent‘s original bathtub for wood-firing that had used in my childhood, blocks, ceder branch
Exhibition view in the gallery’s backyard: An old bath stove, which was used until the 1990s, was brought to the gallery, and 190 liters of agar was prepared there. During the exhibition, the agar at the bottom began to crack under the sunlight, resembling a sun-dried rice field, with layers of agar sticking to the bottom.
Performance on 2021.march.05
In order to visualize the memory of the bath, agar gelatin made from 190L water in the bathtub. The gelatin was cooked in the backyard and turned over in the courtyard. During the exhibition, the gelatin on the floor was stepped on by people and became smaller and was washed away by the rain. In some areas, mold developed on it. The gelatin that stuck to the bottom of the bathtub dried and cracked.
Making agr gelee on 2021.march.03
Technische Unterstützung:
Studio Fluffy
甲田千晴
>>> Portfolio