Xixiu Tour YCAM Performance

What is Meet the Artist?

This is a project in which YCAM and local citizens work together with one instructor each year to consider media and create something together throughout the year.

At the long-term workshop Meet the Artist 2011, local collaborators worked with instructor Katsura Hidefumi to create a "radio that can be listened to in libraries."
This year, I discovered the profound meaning of using my voice to convey messages and listening to others.
A talk summarizing the culmination of the year's activities and a live music performance featuring invited musicians will be recorded free of charge and open to the public.
The recordings will be broadcast on Library Radio until the end of March and will also be included in the CD Book Report, which will be distributed from April onwards.

"Sound," "Voice," "Song," and "Radio"

Humans can distinguish between the intensity and intonation of sounds and voices even while they are still in the womb.
For humans, who are destined to discern sound before light, the "sounds," "voices," and "songs" transmitted by radio are a catalyst for bringing about a community of empathy and understanding. Marshall McLuhan aptly described the characteristics of radio using the metaphor of a "tribal drum."
Tribal drumming is facing a major change. Like many forms of media, radio is at a major crossroads. Technology itself is revolutionizing our perceptions in many ways.
When people face a crisis in the pitch blackness of the night, a voice can encourage and help them. To assert oneself is said to "raise one's voice," and failure is likened to "crumbling and collapsing." The Bible describes a person who has strayed from their true nature as a "canary that has forgotten to sing." The profound experiences that "sound," "voice," and "song" bring to humans are essentially instinctive, but at the same time, they are ethical in the sense that they remove danger, anxiety, and instability.
In our daily lives, where we must overcome crises large and small, radio provides enjoyable and reliable sound, voice, and song for individuals to enjoy, no matter what situation they encounter. This "tribal drum" will live on, no matter what. We want it to be a drum that forges a small but solid tribe. Library Radio was started with this aspiration. For the finale, musicians and media researchers involved in the field of sound, voice, and song will talk about the instinctive and ethical expression of sound, voice, and song in our lives, particularly at this major turning point in history.