Long time collaborator and good buddy Eugenia Lim has put up the video of Nest which I did the sound design for and showed at Dianne Tanzer Gallery December last year. It is part of Euge’s latest body of work which explores the Japanese phenomenon of hikikomori or ‘shut-in syndrome’. After experiencing a social trauma, hikikomori confine themselves to their bedrooms for days, months and in extreme cases, years on end, existing on a diet of anime, manga, gemu (video games), online chats and forums. Over one million hikikomori exist in Japan, with at least that number of family members supporting, feeding and clothing their reclusive (and typically male) child.
Head over to the Sound For Video page to check it out!
Nest references both the cocoon-like bedrooms of hikikomori and the Shinto myth of Amaterasu, the sun goddess, who plunged the world into darkness after retreating into a cave. Nest, features renowned Japanese butoh performer Yumi Umiumare who re-imagines a 21st century Amaterasu.
Eugenia is going to shut herself into Wespace Gallery for a week as part her new work entitled Stay Home Sakoku: The Hikikomori Project (Today Your Love Project). It is going to be awesome!
Director/concept: Eugenia Lim
Performer: Yumi Umiumare
Sound design: Dan West
Camera: Eugenia Lim, Alice Glenn, Paul Philipson
Lighting: Paul Philipson
Costume: Kat Chan
Art direction: Eugenia Lim
So, the thing about writing music on computers is that you are spoilt for choice. To speed up my decision making process, I have been setting myself a different set of rules of audio engagement for each project I am working on. for example, I am working on some new material with the outstanding Hailey Cramer who writes great catchy and soulful tunes. To give the tunes a sense of cohesion, we negotiated a set of parameters for instrumentation and rules of how we played and recorded the instruments.
