interdisciplinary researcher, artist, and cultural organizer
MUTEK.JP × KALKUL AR soundscape experience in Shibuya using the spatial audio app AURA, with festival artists and large-scale park works.
Tokyo | December 2021
MUTEK.JP and mixed-reality company KALKUL launched Urban Sound Gallery, an AR soundscape experience built with KALKUL’s spatial audio app AURA. AURA places geographically located sound holograms in the city; with a smartphone, earphones, and the iOS app, listeners can move through a layer of sound folded into ordinary urban space.
Working from that format, MUTEK.JP and KALKUL invited MUTEK.JP artists to augment Shibuya with their own sounds. The experiences opened on Sunday, 5 December 2021, free on AURA for iOS—a teaser ahead of the sixth edition of MUTEK.JP (8–12 December 2021).
Together, KALKUL AURA and MUTEK.JP tested spatial media as a hybrid of performance and exhibition, physical and virtual presence.
Designed as a gallery of sounds around the city, the MUTEK.JP DISC placed exclusive spatial works by five artists performing at that year’s festival:
Visitors could move between live events, online streaming, and this mixed-reality layer—an urban sound gallery distributed through Shibuya.
Yuri Urano used AURA to carry the ancient sound of Arashiyama in Kyoto onto the then-new construction of Miyashita Park in Shibuya. Listeners could encounter Urano introducing the experience as a hologram at the park, then walk through the Arashiyama soundscape.
Saskia created the largest AURA experience in the project, set in Yoyogi Park—fifty layers of spatial sound mixed with holograms. Three stories invited visitors to reflect on memory and dimensions. At the park entrance, Saskia appeared as a hologram introducing the work.
As bonus content, Tokyo-based Korean artist machìna placed a large hologram at Shibuya Crossing, paired with sound from her album Compass Point.