One of the world’s most populous cities and certainly among the most interesting, Tokyo is a place where there is never a lack of worthwhile things to do, and that includes musical options in the countless “live houses,” or concert bars, peppered across the municipal map. Japanese musicians and fans have long demonstrated a thirst for sounds from abroad, and an informed respect as well, so quality rock, reggae, jazz, and much more can be found easily enough. For the foreign visitor, the distinctively domestic creations and interpretations are the most interesting. While tickets aren’t cheap, the online reservation system is practical (and honourably devoid of treacherous supplementary fees), sound quality is taken seriously, early start times much appreciated, and the sheer energy of the local audiences astounding. Below are a quartet of musical events from early spring that PAN M 360 is pleased to report back on. Stories by Rupert Bottenberg and Alain Brunet who were in Japan last spring.
teamLab Planets Immersive Exhibits, April 5th, Toyosu Area.
In Tokyo, teamLab Planets has a status comparable to that of Montreal’s Société des arts technologiques and Centre Phi, i.e., a center for the dissemination and research of immersive arts, i.e., augmented or virtual reality. teamLab Planets center is located in Toyosu, an industrial area of the port in the midst of hi-tech and residential gentrification, between the Ginza and Odaiba sectors.
Access is generally by reservation only, with a specific time scheduled for your visit. You get there via a light, automated train, in fact very similar to the REM, which gives a great overview of the surrounding area. We find the queue and enter at the appointed time. Staff and reception screens prompt us to take off our shoes and roll up our pants to our knees, then leave them in the lockers provided.
We then walk through a corridor of half-light, then light, into the first room, filled to the brim with crystal curtains or grids through which shapes and lights are projected to a background of ambient music. The paths to be traversed are maze-like at first, but eventually lead to the next corridor.
We then find ourselves in an aquatic room, stepping into about 20 centimetres of water. You look down and see fluorescent water lilies and carp similar to those seen in Japanese ponds. These projections are breathtaking!
We then find ourselves in a room filled with balloons of various sizes, with more ambient music to match, and various lights projected onto all these circular shapes. The new-age soundscapes don’t really detract, but they don’t flesh out the image as you might expect.
A final piece is devoted to an immense bloom, accompanied by chamber music that is both instrumental and electronic, absolutely consonant and thus prone to neoclassical harmonies in an ambient context. The omnipresence of flowers in this virtual universe proves comforting, soothing, a more important complement to the visual creation.
The visit is over, we collect our socks and shoes, and leave TeamLab Planets feeling that the spectacular impact of the technologies has outweighed the depth of the works on the program.
All the exhibits on video HERE
