SUGAI is known for his highly non-repeatable live performances that skillfully incorporates contexts such as purpose of the event, location or background of the venue, event date, etc. This work was created and inspired in part by the performance he gave in the anechoic room of the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University in 2024.

Anechoic room is a space where perceiving spatial characteristics by hearing is difficult because there is no echo or sound reverberation. Therefore, it can “mimic” as if you are in another space, whether real or non-real, by designing the acoustics from scratch. Taking advantage of this characteristic, various attempts have been made by sound artists even in ICC’s anechoic room.

On the other hand, in the anechoic room, it is also possible to present the exhibition in a way so that the visitor comes face-to-face with such extremely artificial spatial specificity. In this work, SUGAI makes the presence of a non-existent someone (or something) appear by creating an illusion as if the sounds are produced inside the exhibit room. This is done by reproducing sounds, such as house settling noises and footsteps binaurally recorded in an anechoic room with special settings, through high-definition speakers. It aims to create disruption of a sense of "something being present" aurally, instead of creating an imaginary trip to “somewhere not here.”

Supervisor: JO Kazuhiro
Special thanks to: HATANAKA Minoru