**HAKUMEI** is a series of spatial sound works that emerged from Wakasa's relationship with his mother during her prolonged life-support treatment and the questions this raised about the boundary between life and death. These questions are layered with the perceptual distance between the living and the dead that he experienced at _Mount Osore._

Rather than representing his mother or death through images or narrative, the series constructs situations in which an inaccessible presence acts upon the bodies of the living through sound.

The first work in the series placed layers of sound within complete darkness, weakening visual orientation. Visitors received sound's spatiality, materiality, and pressure through their bodies, encountering sound as a medium that acts physically upon space and the body.

[Used tracks by ; https://shinjiwakasa.bandcamp.com/album/hakumei](https://shinjiwakasa.bandcamp.com/album/hakumei)

HAKUMEI1.0

**Sus<caul>Pend** is a sound sculpture in which an organic body and a sound system are suspended inside a glass tank. A white blob made of polyurethane foam and silicone emits pulsing noise, modulated singing voices, and fragments of language on the verge of collapse.

The upper blob compresses the spatial sound developed in _HAKUMEI 2.0_ into the central eight-petalled court of the Womb Realm mandala, using eight contact speakers and vibration exciters. Below it, nine electronic modules based on the Diamond Realm mandala contain deliberate malfunctions in parts of their circuitry.

The upper layer figures the body of Wakasa's mother as it was kept alive; the lower disperses the agency and responsibility of sustaining that body across his father, the medical system, machines, and the artist himself.

Sound rings clearly inside the tank, but loses definition as it passes through the glass. The tank becomes an acoustic membrane separating the inaccessible interior of another body from the self standing outside it.

Sus<Caul>Pend

The 16-minute looped composition consists of soundscapes collected from the surrounding area, mixed in real time with sounds captured from insects and microorganisms circulating in organic waste produced during the residency. These sounds are composed, processed, and restructured into a new musical work, presented in a multi-channel audio environment alongside physical and organic materials.

  
by Shinji Wakasa

Length: 16 min (loop audio 16min / 30 min)

Medium: 4.1ch speaker system, raw garbage, contact mic, contact speaker, miller, aquarium.

2025.

The Caul

Digest of the Sound Installation from the Group Exhibition "The ghost sings here" at MA2 Gallery

17-19,24-26,1,2025.

In an abandoned house scheduled for demolition and reconstruction, Shinji Wakasa presented two sound installations.

  
2F: "Andsa and Casper"

(Omnidirectional speakers, display, 15-minute loop)

  
The blue room on the left, with its broken wall, represents materiality and the body, while the white room on the right symbolizes the mind and its echoes (memories). The large hole in the wall, resembling a window, allows sounds to flow between the two spaces, serving as a metaphor for time that moves across different temporal layers.

  
The composition embodies this concept of time through sound: pure sine waves—one of the most primitive acoustic phenomena—blend with guitar harmonics, gradually becoming more intricate. Eventually, these elements merge with string layers that repeatedly weave simple themes like waves or fabric, moving between the two rooms.

  
Some sounds travel back and forth between the rooms like an echo, while others are exclusive to either space, leaving room for different interpretations depending on the listener. The black circle in the visuals represents "Casper-san," a character who symbolizes my (or perhaps your) ghost.

  
1F: "Dependent!"

(Stereo speakers, metronome, contact microphone)

  
The sequence of sounds and words triggered by the winding of a metronome—activated by the listener—creates a structure that lacks agency and directionality. This composition, based on excerpts from the exhibition "薄明" (Hakuraku) (link), can only exist as "music" in fleeting, involuntary moments.

  
The act of winding the metronome becomes the sole determinant of whether sound exists or falls into silence. This work sonically expresses the tension between dependency and the loss of autonomy.

  
The spoken words—extracted from the text and read aloud by ChatGPT—are fragmented into a cut-up audio piece. Synthesized tones, arranged randomly to avoid musical scales, and occasional, unpredictable electric piano sounds react to the metronome’s ticking, creating a constantly shifting soundscape.

  
This represents a metaphor for a life requiring continuous assistance: a state where the music—if it can even be called that—can never die as long as someone keeps winding the mechanism. However, it remains devoid of its own agency, drifting as an existence without musical structure (a metaphor for the loss of self-determination).

  
Ironically, this unnatural state of being resonates beautifully with Matsubara-san’s wavering water installation, forming a paradoxically compelling contrast—something I personally find fascinating.

  
Additionally, if the metronome stops, visitors are encouraged to wind it themselves, making them indirect accomplices in the work.

ユウレイはここで歌う The ghost sings here in MA2 Gallery

"DAWN" Album Installation Overview

 "Yoake no Oto" is an installation piece reconstructed using compositions from my latest ambient music album, "DAWN." This work merges emotion and delicacy in sound, blending shifting light and vibrations to create an immersive dawn experience that engages the senses of hearing, sight, and touch. 

The project draws inspiration from the Zen concept of "going with the flow" (行雲流水), the picture book "Dawn" by Uri Shulevitz, and the ancient Chinese poet Liu Zongyuan's poem "Fisherman." During the creation process, I set a simple rule: to compose in the early morning, using the clarity of morning perception, and to build on the first intuitive sound without denial. This approach allowed the album to develop a natural gradient with minimal contrivance, reflecting the transition from the dark of night to the varied hues of dawn. 

Installation Features

 Venue: Conducted at Sony Park Mini, located underground in the heart of Ginza, Tokyo

 Technology: Utilizes 12 speakers and Sony's "Active Slate" embedded in bench seats to deliver three-dimensional sound and synchronized vibrations

 Lighting Design: Simulates the transition from the dark of night to the early morning light

 Experiential Elements

 Music and Sound: Reconstructed compositions from the album "DAWN"

 Spatial Sound: Vibrations aligned with the sound gradients

 Lighting: Represents the changing light of dawn

 In collaboration with Sony Park Mini, we've crafted an optimal environment to appreciate ambient music as an exhibited artwork. Visitors are enveloped in soundscapes and light, experiencing the unique atmosphere of dawn, unlike anything found elsewhere. 

Sound Of DAWN

**"**薄明2.0**Faintlight 2.0"**

 "Faintlight 2.0" is a series work by Shinji Wakasa that explores new dimensions of sound art. This second installment focuses on the ambiguous and delicate moments existing in the liminal space between life and death, referred to as "faint light." Drawing inspiration from Aomori's Mount Osore, Vladimir Jankélévitch's book Death, the concept of night, and the artist's personal perspective on mortality, the piece invites viewers into profound introspection. Presented within a space cloaked in darkness and illuminated with light, the exhibition creates a sculptural sound installation where music and space dynamically interact. 

  
In Faintlight 2.0, a multi-channel audio system employing Wakasaʼs unique auditory expression techniques investigates how sound shapes space and how space converses with music through sequences of time, the texture of sound, and rhythm. By focusing on the materiality of sound and its spatial arrangement, the work offers audiences new perspectives on time, memory, and existence. Through the movement and modulation of sound, the exhibition engages the listenerʼs auditory senses, rendering a multidimensional depiction of the sensation of time lingering between life and death. 

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