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Memories without records - unmanned orchestra with 66 portable record players
Otomo Yoshihide
Portable record players - devices that rendered music to living rooms and study rooms for just a quarter of century from late 1950s to 1970s. Personal music listening indeed started from these adorable devices, but they were not passed on like radios and TVs, their places taken over by cassette players and walkmans in 1980s, and now the mainstream is dominated by iPods. In particular, during 1960s when 45rpm discs widely known as donut discs in Japan made explosive sales, portable record players actually played leading parts in music listening in every day life. My very fist experience of listening to music was "Kanashiki 60 Sai"(a Turkish song "Mustafa" covered in Japanese) by Sakamoto Kyu, which song was continuously played on a portable record player at my mother's parents' home. It was in 1962 and I was 3 years old then.
I began buying and collecting these devices around mid 1980s when people were moving on to compact discs from traditional records. They were sold for 500 yen at small antique shops, covered with dust as if they were left behind from the evolving world. I first bought them to use them as instruments that make unusual sounds on my stage, but eventually I started collecting them simply out of my affection toward these forgotten small devices. However, I had to give up this collecting activity being confronted by the limited space of the room I then lived. But I kept on collecting their photos. They are uploaded to my blog "JAMJAM Diary"in a massive volume. Someone who has seen these photos approached me with an invitation. "Are you interested in doing something with these numerous portable record players?" What could I expect from these retired record players that seemed to have lived out their given time? Donut discs in which they were specialized no longer release current music. Maybe they could play old music and create a nostalgic atmosphere, but I did not think it fitted my role. The portable record players would no longer be playing the main part if I made sound collage using donut discs. What I wanted to deliver was present day music using these record players.
This is how "Without Records"came to be rolled out in 2005 at shin-bi, a small gallery located in Kyoto. Rather than using records, which are data media for sounds, I asked myself would it be possible to use the sound emitted from portable record players themselves, at least appearance of which seemed to carry memory from Japan's economic boom. Although the players outlived their useful lives, to me, I could still hear squeaky sound of rotating motors, noise picked up by cartridges even when no records were being played, and broken sound from speakers suffering from audio feedback effects. I could hear these sounds as if the portable record players were claiming their energy of life. The sound they made even without records was beautiful enough to fascinate me. Is there any way these lively sound emitting players could form an ensemble? This is how I was inspired for this installment.
After Kyoto, people from SOAP, a gallery in Kita-Kyushu, took the lead in releasing "Without Records Web Version." Forgotten portable players thus came back to life as members of unmanned orchestra playing the artwork of myself as of present. Of course it was not an ensemble where fine classical tunes were played. And yet the noises that I heard from them were filled with euphoria and nostalgic enough to remind me of my childhood when my home was flooded with such sounds thanks to having an electric engineer as a father.
The first installation of Without Records in Kyoto had a flavor of chamber music with 16 members. This time in Sendai, it is expected to be a full scale orchestra with 66 members. No matter how much I imagine in my head the sound and the scenery generated by them, I cannot really tell what will happen until all 66 players actually start making sounds.
It is true that the actual site of music performance is unmanned, but there are a lot of people who are involved in the process. Aoyama Yasutomo from STORE15NOV, who provides support in producing this project and also is responsible for installation designing, technical team led by Kanachiku Hiroshi responsible for setting up the actual system, and a lot of staffs from sendai mediatheque including Ogawa Naoto back up the project and it is proceeding day by day. How would the orchestra look in the end? I am so looking forward to seeing the installation in January.