Description
Edition Omega Point, Japan
“From participation in the early FLUXUS to giving an introduction of FUTURISM, Kuniharu Akiyama (1929-1996), a renowned music critic, was involved in a vast range of activities. Particularly in the 1960s, he recorded a lot of music on tape for himself.
“Environmental Music for Dining Room of Athletes’ Village in Tokyo Olympics 1964”
From 1961, under the direction of the architect, Kunio Maekawa, Okada Stone had worked on a project to produce an exterior wall in stonemasonry style for the Japan Pavilion at the New York World Expo held in April 1964. To check its quality, a prototype was supposed to be displayed at a certain space in Takamatsu city. This location became a project of collaborative work and was finally used as a cafe. A collective formed by an architect Tadashi Yamamoto for construction design, Sora for facade and interior design, Akiyama for music and Junosuke Okuyama, an engineer of Sogetsu Art Center, for in-store sound design, worked on each assignment and the cafe“Shiro no Me (Eye of the castle)” was opened.
Two huge stone speakers were installed on the left and right side of the entrance to the cafe. These speakers were invented by Okuyama and produced by Okada Stone. “Enjoy our speaker system that makes it possible to play music in the most musical quality. As only ‘pure sound’ will be projected, the sound is superb” was written on a flyer at the opening of the cafe. This became possible because all vibration except for the paper speaker cone can be suppressed to the utmost limit by the weight of the stone.
In Sogetsu Studio, Akiyama used the sound of stones as material and composed an ambient music piece called Shiro no Me; Music for Coffee House No.1 for these speakers. This piece was assumed to be created by adding reverberation components to an improvisational performance with Sanukite and slowing down the playback to approximately one-half speed. This very primitive technique was chosen to take a full advantage of the beauty of Sanukite sound.
About one year and a half later, for the Tokyo Olympics held in October 1964, two large dining halls called “Sakura” and “Fuji” were built in the male section of the Yoyogi Athletes’ Village by architect Kiyonori Kikutake. It is said that while Akiyama composed an ambient music piece called Music for eating they decided to transport the stone speakers from the cafe“Shiro no Me” to the Fuji hall. Also in the front garden of the Fuji hall, an ambient piece called Music for resting was played. Both pieces, which were in the similar composition style of Music for Coffee House, were recorded at Sogetsu Studio.