from digital ECHOS to virtual ETHOS
Music technology meets philosophy

Katsufumi Matsui: The 360° Skyline Song

Katsufumi Matsui: The 360°Skyline Song

Onassis Cultural Center, Roof Terrace

The Boracay Beach in the Philippines has a beautiful horizontal line dividing the sky and the sea, which looked like the visual manifestation of a sound wave, and this experience inspired “The 360°Skyline Song.”Then, I decided that I would make a sound work to listen to the song structured by a skyline. “The 360°Skyline Song”is an audio-visual installation work that creates sound waves from the visual boundary between the surrounding scenery and sky. The visual data of the surrounding scenery is captured with a video camera rotating a full 360 degrees. This visual data is transformed into sound waves in real time through the analysis of each camera frame. By acquiring the color temperature and the air temperature simultaneously, “The 360°Skyline Song”improvises an expressive synthesis which draws on the unique moment. Together, the audio and visual data achieve the intuitive recognition of the transition of the boundary in sceneries. This installation offers a new way to perceive the surroundings, by interactively producing sound from the 360°degree landscape and showing the captured video.

Technical cooperation: Kazunori Ogasawara and Seico Okamoto

Katsufumi Matsui is a new media artist based in Tokyo, Japan. He is interested in transformations between audio and visual data, specifically influenced by visual contours in the environment. He has received various awards, such as the Digital Signage Award 2014 Special Prize and the Good Design Award 2011 in Japan. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Kyoto University. Currently, he is a graduate student in the Chuichi Arakawa Laboratory at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies.