Ryuichi Sakamoto at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Part Three. Giving “Audio-Visual” a New Meaning.

Once again, here’s a catalog description of what I saw:

This work was originally a collaborative performance by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Toshio Iwai using music and images, first performed at Art Tower Mito in 1996. Tunes selected from MIDI data actually played by Sakamoto at Ars Electronica ‘97, which were discovered among Iwai’s archives, will be recreated and presented along with video data captured from the scene at the time. Iwai will reconstruct the programming he employed back then and use Sakamoto’s favorite MIDI piano to revive this legendary performance, which, in the form of an installation, has never aged. Sakamoto’s origins as an artist who used cutting-edge media skillfully with playful creativity, and continually pursued and expanded the possibilities of expression through sound.

Imagine then the idea of actually seeing a sound.  That is what this particular installation is designed to do.

The term MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and it is technology that allows one to create and transform musical information.  Sakamoto uses the MIDI to take musical notes and turn them into images of light.

For me as a pianist this was an especially significant exhibition because I believe that part of my responsibility is to turn music into actual thought for the listener.  By that I don’t mean for the listener to say something like “That’s a pretty melody,” or “That seems really hard to play,” but instead that the music inspires a certain amount of thought.  It can be something like a feeling of calmness, or even the decision to look at a problem one is having in life a different way so as to figure out a new way of approaching it.

I believe at its best music can transform the life of the listener, sometimes in small ways, and at other times in really big ones.  However, the artist has an obligation to, like a MIDI player, turn the sounds from the keyboard into the light of inspiration, by finding as much meaning as possible in every note the composer has written.