Last time I was in Tokyo (2004) I visited the ICC Gallery & had a religious experience, in fact more than just one. The first thing that struck me was a fundamental cultural difference as to how art is appreciated and supported. In New Zealand large corporations tend to invest their advertising & sponsorship funds supporting such pointless activities as rugby (violent men chasing a funny shape ball around a paddock?) whereas in Japan a Telecommunications corporation such as NTT fund a cutting edge art gallery. I sure know which I prefer! Anyway the other religious experiences involved the artworks themselves incredibly inspiring works that expanded my preconceived notions of what ‘interactive’ and ‘digital’ art actually mean. Heres a link to an archive of that exhibition: Reactivity
So while planning my imminent trip to Tokyo one of the first places I checked the schedule of, was the one & same gallery and as luck would have it, there is an ongoing exhibition called Open Space and of the exhibits one in particular caught my eye/ear: Anechoic
Room!
If you work in sound or music and have never personally experienced an anechoic room, then this little rant is going to be fairly hypothetical for you. The effect is profound & while it can be described, it cannot be appreciated unless you have been there yourself. In my youth I spent a few years attempting to study Electrical Engineering at Canterbury University & the one vivid memory I have is from spending time in the anechoic room in the Physics department… and the idea of me being at university means it was like 20 years ago, such is the perceptual imprint. For someone like me who loves sounds bouncing around my immediate environment the one word I would use to describe it is oppressive. And its funny, I well know what a vibrant & thereby tiring environment Tokyo can be & accordingly plan to spend some time seeking out Zen temples for some quiet time, but until checking on the ICC, I never imagined that quiet time would include the most extreme quiet time possible!!!
By definition an anechoic chamber is a room with no echoes, and aside from the padded walls notice in the photo above how the floor is also non-reflective – its a mesh with padding beneath. The lack of echo means there is no spatialisation information for your ears to process – EVERYTHING is a point source. Equally an anechoic chamber is isolated from outside interference & it is the combination of isolation AND lack of reflection that effected John Cage to such a degree that he compsoed the masterpiece 4’33″ But please, dont believe me or him – make a nusiance of yourself with a local university & find an anechoic chamber to experience the effects for yourself!
A quote from John Cage, after visiting the anechoic chamber at Harvard University back in the late 1940s: Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but as he wrote later, he “heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation.” Oh, and heres a MIDI file of 4’33″ incase you have the technology to enjoy it…
