Imaginary Sphere

The boundaries between music and non-music – who defines them and where are these boundaries? Guest artist and scholar Takuro Shibayama has dedicated his creative work to breaking up this separation. From June 30 to July 1, 2018, the ZKM will be showing its sound installation »Imaginary Spheres«. 

Shibayama alternates between musical and non-musical artistic expression. Above all, electroacoustic composition and the possibilities of spatial projection offer him the potential to overcome this separation by abstracting the audible and inaudible aspects.

In his composition »Imaginary Sphere« a computer program abstracts the audible elements. The degree of complexity is controlled on the basis of the entropy of information theory. The composition is based on recordings of participants in a composition workshop with electroacoustic music. By diversifying the owner of the sound material, i.e. by trying to remove the material from authorship, Shibayama tries to abstract the inaudible aspects of the work.   

Such works can be seen as a step into the realm of relational art, since they aim to create realities between the diversity of people and electroacoustic music, which is considered esoteric art in Japan. Thus the traditional purpose of electroacoustic music pedagogy and the spread of electroacoustic music can be overcome and at this moment the indescribable stage can be reached.