With the theme of “reconstructing the orchestra through technology,” the “Yoichi Ochiai × Japan Philharmonic Project” launched in 2018. Again this year, WOW participated as the “performer of images” in the “____ Music Concert,” or rather, the “Twin Music Concert.” While the past two years had focused on creating a space where audiences could experience new appeal and value in the orchestra, this year the project sought to explore what an orchestra could be during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to a theater performance with a limited audience, the concert was also streamed online, aiming to offer a performance where new appeal could be experienced from two perspectives. In the theater performance, the audience experienced innovative music that opened up a new era of multidirectional sound in space, alongside image performers projected onto screens. In the online stream, the project pursued a sense of immediacy through concert-quality 2K video including AR imagery, industry-leading sound quality (AAC-LC 384 kbps), and three-dimensional visual direction made possible only through digital means. The visual experience of this performance centered on the AR imagery in the online stream, while the theater screens featured visuals that synchronized with, responded to, and contrasted with the AR imagery. Each offered a different yet equally valuable experience. In addition, by allowing theater audiences to later watch the online performance when it was re-streamed, the project sought to create a synergistic effect in which the performance could be relived from a different perspective. In visualizing the clues discovered through examining the music, the project did not rely on conventional notions of AR or stage visual direction, but instead aimed, as “image performers,” to create visual effects that accompanied the world of the music from two different perspectives, with the hope that each would be recognized as having its own new value. The title used up to just before the performance, “____ Music Concert,” was intended to express how the originally planned concert had been wiped away by COVID-19, and how a new concert was then pursued through trial and error. It also encouraged each viewer to think about the word that would fill the blank in the title. Near the end of the performance, the word corresponding to the “____” was revealed, and as the “Twin Music Concert,” a new concert was born from the search for what form a music concert could take during the pandemic.

In space, an ensō emerges, and the body passes through that ensō as a whole. This circle of light is a perfect, undistorted circle—a true circle. Even if you keep walking forward for several steps, the perfect circle continues. An ensō, one of the forms of calligraphy and painting in Zen, is a circle drawn with a single brushstroke; in ancient times, it was sometimes represented by tracing a circular ring in the air with a staff or similar object. It is said to symbolically express enlightenment, truth, the universe as a whole, and equality. It is also a circle that reflects the heart of the viewer, leaving interpretation to each person. “teamLab & TikTok, teamLab Reconnect: Art and Sauna” (Keyakizaka, Tokyo) Exhibition details: https://reconnect.teamlab.art/en Work details: https://www.teamlab.art/en/w/walkthrough_lightcircles/