Ryuichi Sakamoto | Seeing Sound, Hearing Time: A Journey into the Art of Sound and Time

Enhance Your Experience by Reading the Captions

For a more rewarding experience, I personally recommend taking the time to read the explanatory panels displayed near each artwork. It’s helpful to read them before entering the art space, then engage with the work, and perhaps revisit the panels afterward. Because the works are so pure, it’s crucial to understand “what is being presented and in what context” beforehand. Without this foundation, the pieces may seem unnecessarily complex, which would be a missed opportunity. Is it embarrassing to read the detailed descriptions like a novice? Absolutely not—just like carrying an oxygen tank when diving, reading the explanations is a necessary tool for diving deeper into the experience.

The installation TIME TIME, located in the first-floor exhibition space, greets visitors as a new collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani (from Dumb Type). Set to Sakamoto’s music, the installation presents visuals that symbolize themes such as “the relationship between water (nature) and humans” and “the concept of time.” Drawing inspiration from works like Natsume Soseki’s Ten Nights of Dreams, the Noh play Kandō, and Zhuangzi’s The Butterfly Dream, the piece introduces the compression of time, followed by the slow, deliberate passage of a shō (Japanese wind instrument) player across three screens. It’s a striking moment—though the player never seems to stop, she doesn’t appear to move at a constant speed either. As I prepared to capture a shot when she reached the nearest screen, she vanished between the screens, and I found myself waiting for quite some time before she reappeared. Was it that the wait made time feel longer? I suddenly became acutely aware of how time can stretch and shrink depending on one’s personal perception.

Transforming Water Droplets into Sound

Similarly, water state 1 by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani is highly suggestive. At first glance, it’s unclear what exactly is being presented, but it’s a piece where water droplets fall from a ceiling device into a water basin at the center of the exhibition space, with the changes in the ripples converted into sound. The timing of the water droplets’ fall appears to be controlled based on precipitation data from the Kanto region, where the exhibition is being held. If you stay long enough, you can experience the changes in rainfall and the accompanying shifts in lighting.

As you watch the ripples on the water and listen carefully, you can feel the sound waves spreading at exactly the same timing and speed as the ripples. Gradually, the boundary between the ripples in the water and those in your own body becomes unclear. Since the human body is 60% water, perhaps when we perceive sound, our bodies experience something similar to this.

A “Piano Tuned by Nature” Found in the Disaster Zone

IS YOUR TIME by Ryuichi Sakamoto with Shiro Takatani is a work where I highly recommend reading the explanation to understand its meaning. The grand piano, standing between a video of a snowy sky and a water basin, belongs to the Miyagi Prefectural Agricultural High School, which was affected by the tsunami of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Sakamoto interpreted this as a “piano tuned by nature” and created the work based on that concept. The piano, which has ceased to be a musical instrument and returned to a “thing,” endures the gaze of the viewer, yet occasionally produces sound. According to the explanation, “The piano, having lost its function and role as a musical instrument, emits sound based on earthquake data from around the world, playing the Earth’s tremors between the sky and the sea (the interstice).” There is a slight sense of surprise when the silence, which one expects to continue, is suddenly broken.

Moisture: Essential for Absorbing Sound

The collaboration with Germany’s Carsten Nicolai is also fascinating. He is an artist known by the name “Alva Noto” and has worked with Sakamoto on several live performances and album productions since the 2000s. The piece featured in this exhibition is a video work based on a script he wrote, inspired by the adventure novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, combined with tracks from Sakamoto’s final album, 12. Of the two videos, ENDO EXO is particularly memorable.

As Sakamoto’s piano plays, the camera slowly follows the form of taxidermy and skeletal specimens. The title ENDO (inner) and EXO (outer) are said to come from Greek prefixes. In this case, the “outer” can be interpreted as the taxidermy (the skin), while the “inner” refers to the bones. As I gazed at the dry skull of an animal, I thought about the bone-conduction headphones I recently purchased. With those, I could make these bones vibrate, but I wouldn’t be able to actually “hear” the sound. No matter how much you shake the bones or the eardrum, if the lymph fluid in the inner ear doesn’t ripple, the sound won’t be recognized as sound. Moisture is necessary to absorb sound. Naturally, my focus shifted “inward,” to the watery content protected by the skeleton. The act of listening, it seems, happens much closer to the inner layers, near the mind or spirit, than I had realized.

A Monumental Work Reflecting Sakamoto’s async

Upon entering the underground second-floor exhibition space, I would like to highlight once again the collaboration with Shiro Takatani. async-immersion tokyo, featuring a massive 18-meter-wide LED wall, is a work from the same lineage as async-drowning, which was presented at the 2017 exhibition Ryuichi Sakamoto | async: Installation Music. Yuko Namba, the guest curator of this exhibition, reflects on the experience in her essay, noting, “Many visitors, upon entering the exhibition space, stayed for a long time, experiencing it as if they were listening to an entire album in deep focus.” In fact, I felt that there were particularly many people deeply engrossed in this work.

Set to the music from Sakamoto’s experimental album async, the video by Takatani unfolds. The landscapes on the screen gradually reduce to lines, pixel by pixel, almost as if the threads of a tapestry are unraveling. Eventually, everything transforms into a world of horizontal lines resembling another dimension. After this, new landscapes slowly “weave” into place. Whether you begin watching from the start or the end depends on when you enter the exhibition space, but the more stimulating experience may be witnessing everything “unraveling” helplessly. Sitting on the bench in front of the screen, you’ll feel the lines of dissolution gradually approach from one side toward your feet. There’s a sense of fear that you might lose what keeps you tethered to this moment and lose your shape entirely. The sensation of “melting” when the line finally passes is something you should experience for yourself.

Reconstructing Sakamoto’s Opera LIFE in an Installation

In the next exhibition room lies a standout installation, LIFE–fluid, invisible, inaudible…, one of the exhibition’s key highlights. Nine floating water tanks release mist, through which images are projected onto the floor. Both the visuals and sounds are randomly generated, creating a constantly evolving experience. While there are five collaborative works by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani on display, this particular piece marks one of their earliest collaborations. The “mist,” which will recur in their later works, takes on a pivotal role from the very beginning.

The blue sky reflected at your feet becomes unpredictably blurred by the mist, gently swaying with the ripples of water droplets. When images of the sky or trees appear, it feels as though you are gazing at a rain-soaked garden from the opposite side of the ground—strikingly beautiful. At the same time, this piece is a reimagining of Sakamoto’s opera LIFE (1999), and at times, the sounds and visuals used in the opera reappear through the mist.

The piece, with themes such as “war and revolution” and “science and technology,” transforms the entire space into a tense, unsettling environment. The text projected onto the floor becomes unreadable as it is obscured by the mist, and while trying to follow its meaning, it gradually disappears. Curious, I later translated the words captured in a photograph, discovering that they were the names of bird species that went extinct due to human environmental destruction, appearing and fading away in a fleeting scene. Perhaps those who had experienced the opera LIFE would have understood it more deeply… I envy them.

In the Heart of the Mist

As suggested by the title, in the collaborative works of Sakamoto and Takatani, the mist serves as a catalyst, manifesting “fluid, invisible, and inaudible elements.” 《LIFE–WELL TOKYO》Fog Sculpture #47662, a special collaboration with the acclaimed “fog sculptor” Fujiko Nakaya, transforms the museum’s sunken garden into a space filled with mist, sound, and light by Shiro Takatani. The installation “performs” every 30 minutes during the exhibition, offering visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in its evolving symphony.

During the media preview, a special site-specific dance was performed by dancer Min Tanaka. As he inhaled the mist and became one with it, the sight of him fully absorbing the sound with his entire body was truly striking.

Focusing on Artistic Purity Over Accessibility

The only bright room in the venue is the “Ryuichi Sakamoto Archive.” This valuable section offers insights into the core philosophies, ideas, and historical context behind Sakamoto’s works. Of particular interest are the handwritten notes by Sakamoto displayed in glass cases. These fragments of thought, written in short phrases, can be interpreted as both a “notebook of ideas” and perhaps even as cries from the heart (or poems?).

The related materials for the opera LIFE, displayed on the bookshelves, are also very intriguing. Among them, a meeting memo from eight months before the opening, likely created for those involved in the production, is particularly interesting. It states, “If the storyline is hard to follow, insert a concise explanation by a narrator and supplement with booklets or other materials.” At this point, it was already declared that the purity of the work itself would be prioritized over ease of understanding for the general audience. The memo continues: “The important thing is to convey a vision that cannot be expressed in words through a comprehensive expression of sound and imagery.” I felt that the same mindset permeated this exhibition as well.

Display of the Piano Sakamoto Cherished and Used

The exhibition concludes with a special archive display of “Music Plays Images X Images Play Music”. This project originated from a collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto (music) and Toshio Iwai (visuals) that was presented at the 1997 Ars Electronica, where it won the Grand Prix in the Interactive Art category. In this exhibition, a combination of MIDI data recording Sakamoto’s performance and video footage capturing him during the performance creates an emotional, immersive space that makes it feel as if Sakamoto is playing right in front of you. The piano on display is also the very MIDI piano that Sakamoto used and loved.

The data from Sakamoto’s performance is instantly converted into visuals, reflected as streaks of light on the screen. As the melody builds from single notes to chords, countless streaks of light stretch upwards, seemingly about to pour down toward the audience. This instantly recalls the image of the rain-drenched water basin seen earlier in the exhibition. It’s as if sound rain falls inside the body, creating countless ripples that spread and seep through. Perhaps this is what it means to “listen” to time, I thought. It was a moment of brilliant narrative payoff at the very end.

What Will You Take Away from This Silent Yet Passionate Exhibition?

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s first large-scale exhibition in Japan, Ryuichi Sakamoto | Seeing Sound, Listening to Time, will be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo until Sunday, March 30, 2025. This exhibition offers a unique experience of encountering sound in new ways and evokes a mysterious sense of emotion through the bending and stretching of time. During this crisp, cold season, why not sharpen your senses and engage with “sound”?

Ryuichi Sakamoto | seeing sound, hearing time

Exhibition Dates: December 21, 2024 (Saturday) – March 30, 2025 (Sunday)
Opening Hours: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM (Last entry to exhibition rooms is 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (open on January 13 and February 24), December 28 – January 1, January 14, February 25
Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Special Exhibition Rooms 1F/B2F, and others (4-1-1 Miyoshi, Koto-ku, Tokyo)
Admission Fees: General 2,400 yen / University and Vocational School Students, 65 and older 1,700 yen / Middle and High School Students 960 yen
Free for Elementary School Students and younger
Organized by: The Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Asahi Shimbun, TV Asahi
Sponsored by: Kakaku.com, Digital Garage, Toho Leo, NISSHA, New Balance Japan, Yamada Bee Farm
Special Cooperation: KAB Inc., KAB America Inc., Dumb Type Office, Avex Entertainment, K Garage, Takenaka, Toho Leo, Hotstaff Promotion, Uniqlo
Cooperation: J-WAVE
Grants: Agency for Cultural Affairs, FY 2024 Japan’s Global Art Expansion Project
Special Equipment Cooperation: Eastern Sound Factory
Technical Cooperation: Hexagon Japan
Equipment Cooperation: Artwith, Color Kinetics Japan, Bricks
Guest Curator: Yuko Namba
Inquiries: 050-5541-8600 (Hello Dial)
Exhibition Website: https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/exhibitions/RS/