The Way of Tea / Japanese Tea ceremony/practice has taught me a lot in recent years and it became one of my reference in terms of making narrative art.
It is a set of aesthetical and philosophical practice born in war period, around 15th Century, to restore the peace of mind.
The sharing of tea, flower, painting, and time is done in the tea room, which is distinctively special and essential to the ceremony.
However, they are only a part of the whole experience.
It has a gradual process of time and space from mundane into something special.
The narratives begin when the guests receive the invitation from the host.
Both of them spend a certain time preparing themselves, longing for the meeting.
On the appointed day, people come on time, getting out of their own lives behind.
The tea room, which usually is a very small-hut, is approached by the gate, garden view, water, stone-steps.
All of the people. gone through their own process, get together in a place, are integral to this acts of art.
When every little things worked together, they finally enable themselves absorbed into the beauty.

My art is very much rooted in this aspect of Japanese aethetics,
and I am trying to capture the spirit with the things around me.

September, 2007
sound artist mamoru

3 day performance under full moon at onsitsu/ glass house on roof top of the Daikanyama Hill-side-terrace annex B, in Tokyo.
production designer: ura

I made a little book, which only contains a few words taken out from my project notes regarding this work, like short poem.
This was a "invitation" to the work, the prologue of the narratives.
The books were sent weeks before the performance after people made their reservation.

The box, a hard-cover-book type of design, is handed to people when they show up on the performing day.
It cannot fold their sound-experience: however, it fits with the little book and still have a space for other thing.

More than a month later, people receive this CD, which has 2 tracks of sound. One is a 5min of field recording, and you hear someone walking towards the sea. The other is a excerpt from the performance.
I wanted to make the CD in the mail box begun the last chapter of this narrative work.

The narratives hopefully goes on as they put CD in the box and take it out again to listen to the sound some time

production designer: ura