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“A Piece for Metronome and Anechoic Room” [2009]

MAEBAYASHI Akitsugu

“A Piece for Metronome and Anechoic Room”

Outline

The visitor sits in a chair placed in the room, facing a clicking metronome. The clicks overlap and sometimes override other sounds recorded in different locations, while the lights change in time. Sounds overriding the live sounds from the metronome in front of the audience have been recorded in various spaces with the metronome located in a similar position to the audience listening to the sounds—that is likely to transform the space surrounding the metronome.

The Anechoic Room—in which this artwork is placed—is insulated with echo-absorbing materials. Usually, we unconsciously judge the size of a room from the echoes we hear of various sounds. In an anechoic room with no echo, the metronome clicks feel unreal or unnatural. In the same space, stereophonic speakers play back binaural recordings of the metronome clicking in various natural spaces, with the accompanying echoes intact. This allows us to compare two different spaces—a surreal, anechoic room and a pseudo-realistic yet artificially created space produced using 3D acoustic technology—and to think about how we perceive the “reality” of a space.

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