ユウレイはここで歌う The gost sing here

“The Singing Ghost” — Sound Installation Digest
Group Exhibition at MA2 Gallery, Tokyo | January 17–26, 2025

As part of the group exhibition The Singing Ghost, artist Shinji Wakasa presented two conceptually linked sound installations in an abandoned house soon to be demolished and rebuilt. The transience of the site becomes an integral element of the works, both of which address themes of memory, presence, and sonic embodiment.

2F Installation — Andsa and Casper

Omnidirectional speakers, video display | 15-minute loop

Located on the second floor, this dual-room installation explores the tension between physical and metaphysical existence. The blue room with a collapsed wall represents the material body, while the adjacent white room embodies memory and the lingering traces of the spirit. A large, open breach between the two spaces functions as a symbolic temporal conduit, allowing sound to traverse from one realm to the other.

The composition blends sine waves and guitar harmonics—sonic elements chosen for their purity and resonance—as they gradually evolve into layered string textures. These harmonic cycles flow like tides between the rooms, symbolizing non-linear, meditative time. Some sounds oscillate across rooms like echoes; others remain fixed, creating a spatially and temporally fractured listening experience.

Projected within the piece is a simple, black circle—Casper-san—a spectral figure that represents either the artist’s ghost, or perhaps the listener’s. The installation invites visitors to contemplate presence, intimacy, and the quiet mobility of memory across broken architecture.

1F Installation — Dependent!

Stereo speakers, metronome, contact microphone

On the ground floor, Dependent! centers around a mechanical metronome whose spring must be manually wound by the audience. Each rotation activates a network of sound fragments—spoken text (read by an AI voice and fragmented through cut-up techniques), detuned synthesizer tones, and intermittent electric piano notes—all of which are algorithmically responsive to the metronome’s ticking.

Rather than forming a cohesive musical structure, the sounds remain erratic, fractured, and fundamentally contingent—unable to assert autonomy. The piece reflects a precarious sonic state: one that requires external assistance to exist, and which remains suspended in a liminal zone between music and non-music, structure and dissolution.

This work is a metaphor for a life that cannot end as long as someone continues to assist it. It is a soundscape of survival without sovereignty, evoking the condition of extended dependency—where agency is outsourced and time becomes a loop of caretaking.

Interestingly, this uneasy sonic presence formed a subtle counterpoint to fellow artist Matsubara’s water-based visual installation. Their juxtaposition created a paradoxical harmony between fragility and beauty—an unintended yet compelling resonance.

Visitors were encouraged to rewind the metronome themselves, becoming quiet collaborators in sustaining the piece’s fragile life cycle.

All photo by Shota Nakayama