The future's so bright I gotta wear headphones!

[imomus]

I've been keeping this under wraps, but now it's confirmed and I can go public. I'll be spending six weeks -- from mid-January to the end of February next year -- doing a sound art project at Future University, Hakodate, Hokkaido. Lehan Ramsay, an Australian academic at the university's Communication department, approached me a couple of months ago about this and I sent a proposal called Lost Radio Found Sound. That proposal has now been accepted, and I'll be in Hokkaido through two of the coldest months of winter, collecting sounds with the help of students and locals and turning them into a web-streaming art radio station.



The university -- which has a campus as futuristic as its name -- is focused on technology and communication. I'll be based in a small building off campus called the Art Harbour, which has a gallery on the ground floor and living quarters upstairs.



Here's an excerpt from my original proposal:

Based in the Art Harbour, Lost Radio Found Sound will have as its goal the encouragement of cognition rather than recognition, texture rather than text. Together with students from the Communication Department and local people, Momus will work on the generation, manipulation, editing, compiling and broadcasting of various types of sound, found on the web and also recorded locally in Hakodate. There will be a temporary installation in the Art Harbour, an interactive exhibition space where visitors can produce and play with sound, generating their own material for the broadcasts. The emphasis will be on sound's capacity to transport us to interesting locations, but also on its tactile and textural qualities; using small digital devices like sound-capable cameras and keitai phones, participants will collect 'found sound objects'. These might be the 'sounds of food', unreliable and inarticulate documentaries on local wildlife, humming, the sound of cooking and dancing, or speech used for its textural qualities rather than the transmission of information. For two months Hakodate will be transformed into a kind of electronic Prospero's Island: a place full of 'airs and sounds which give delight, and harm not'.



I'm really delighted to be doing this project. I've never been to Hokkaido, but from the photos I've found of Hakodate it has an intriguingly Russian look to it.

Comments

Hibiya Dori wa doko des ka?

[dragonmonkey.livejournal.com]

I knew a math teacher named Sato who went to school at the Future University up there. He never said much about college life, but he was very friendly. Out of all the math teachers I've met, his haircut was the best. We couldn't communicate very well at the time, but we knew that we both enjoyed the music of Stevie Wonder and that made us pals.

Also, good luck with the Pimsleur. I think those MP3s are great. I used them before I came to Japan. I learned very fast with them - I only wish they had continued after level III. They were really good for pronunciation and rhythm. I'm often burning copies of those Pimsleur discs and giving them to friends who are trying to learn Japanese.

I have fond memories of that moment in one of the first 12 lessons where the guy trying to set a time for a date with an uninterested girl fails take a hint. Also thought it was funny that one of the first things they teach is "Why don't we go back to my place?"