Takuro Shibayama. Participatory Sounds

Takuro Shibayama has worked several times as a guest artist at the ZKM. He developed a participative and generative composition system based on findings and models from cognitive science. In a lecture followed by a concert, he will provide insights into his artistic and scientific work. 

During his time as a guest artist and researcher at the ZKM, Takuro Shibayama initiated and led a sound montage workshop with the lecturers Ludger Brümmer, Hiromi Ishii and Benjamin Miller to create electroacoustic music. This workshop marked the basis of his further activities in Karlsruhe. The three instructors then remixed the participants' finished fixed media pieces and completed the collaborative work, which will be premiered at the concert. Both the workshop and the concert are part of the Denshi Onkyo People Project. 

The Denshi Onkyo People Project is essentially a participatory project with a focus on electroacoustic music. This genre is often seen by the general public as 'the Other' in music. As a consequence, this genre is denied a large and broad audience. In order to counteract this and to convey the special sound design possibilities of this genre as well as the general joy of musicking, Takuro Shibayama runs workshops with interested people of all ages and different backgrounds, for whom electroacoustic music is rather unknown and in whose lives it plays no role. 

The aim of Takuro Shibayama's activities is to inspire more people with the creative processes and thought processes of sound creation and to turn them into active music makers. Shibayama's teaching methods are based on methods from cognitive science and Gestalt psychology. Part of the overall project is the development of a concept based on interdisciplinary perspectives of sociology and cultural anthropology to work out the social relevance of electroacoustic music.

Prior to the premieres, Japanese musicologist Yuji Numano will introduce the special features of the project with reference to the history of contemporary music. Takuro Shibayama will then give a lecture on the interdisciplinary perspectives of the workshop concept in project practice, as these cannot be fully represented in the concert alone. Following this, Shibayama will present a film screening of the collaborative works created in 2023 - 24 in collaboration with BankART1929 and the Goethe-Institut Tokyo. 

At the same time, a total of eight works created since 2023 in collaboration with BankART1929 in Japan and the Goethe-Institut Tokyo, as well as a work created in collaboration with the Swedish Museum of Performing Arts, will be performed as a video in the anteroom of the Kubus.