THE WAY I HEAR, Fuchu 2012-2013 / Fuchu Art Museum Open Studio Program 57



OPEN STUDIO     Listening     Research     Performance     Leaflet



Research



"What does the sound that I never heard, listened to, imagined, or cannot even imagine sound like?"


Beer facotory / Tsuneichi Miyamoto

research location
photo: mamoru

After a month had passed since I moved to Fuchu and started listening and researching, I had a chance to visit the Fuchu history museum. In their bookshop, I found a little book called "Fuchu as Tsuneichi Miyamoto had seen". Tsuneichi Miyamoto was a researcher of folklore, who had lived in Fuchu from 1961 to his death in 1981. He left tons of photographs and some texts related to Fuchu area.

I took out the book at night, and realized that I had just taken a photo of the same beer factory that Tsuneichi also took 45 years ago in 1968. I found several photos that I can identify the place. There were a short description about the birds near his house.

I began to wonder what was the soundscape htat his ears had listened to.


Fujimi street / Steam Locomotive / Railway

research location
photo: mamoru

As I read more of Tsuneichi's book, I became more curiou about him, so I contacted a researcher at the museum to learn about him. I introduced myself to the researcher and told him that I was eager to know about Tsuneichi, but my research ultimately is a research of soundscape. During our conversation, by knowing I was looking for interesting sound, he told me that there was steam locomotive running near by where now Fuchu Art Musuem locates.

The railway happened to be the street that I almost walk everyday to get to museum from the apartment that I was staying.

I started to look for documents about this railway and steam locomotive, hoping that I can "hear" it. Then I needed to go through a lot of documents related to WWII since the park where museum is located used to be the U.S. Military base after war, and before and during the war, it used to be the Japanese Army's laboratory of fuel. It was a strange feeling, but the information that I already known came alive through trying to listen to the sound of the past.


Sengen Cho / Laboratory of fuel for Japanese Army / Pre War - Post War

listening memoimage: reconstructed listening memo of 1941.10.23

I gathered all the documents available at the library to capture the sound of steam locomotive and its surroundings.There were official documents, personal dialy, literature, news papers and magazines. I finnaly reached the point where I can draw the listening memo of a certain day.


Sengen Cho / U.S. Military base / Abondoned base

listening memo
image: reconstructed listening memo of 1968.05.28

As I proceeded my research, I had done several interviews to capture the details for reconstruction of soundscapes. Through the interviews, sound of the 1960s, which was exactly when Tsuneichi was in Fuchu, came very clear.


A score for performance

score 1968

In the same way the listening memo of the present time had been trancribed into a score sheet for dictation performance, the reconstructed listening memos were also transcribed.



(c) 2013 a few notes production