Sounding the eras — Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk at the V&A
29 Feb 2020
We worked with Storey Studios on the V&A’s beautiful new show Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk:
This exhibition presents the kimono as a dynamic and constantly evolving icon of fashion, revealing the sartorial, aesthetic and social significance of the garment from the 1660s to the present day, both in Japan and the rest of the world.
Echoing the framework of the 3D design of the whole exhibition, we aimed to make the exhibition soundscapes evocative aspects of landscape and culture that form a continuity between Edo era and modern Japan, whilst exploring the impact that exterior cultures have exerted and how they have served as a catalyst for transformation throughout the timeline of the exhibition. We create a series of three soundscapes, each one reinforcing the theme and character of the three sections: Kimono in Japan; Kimono in the World and Kimono Transformed.
Room 1 — Kimono in Japan
Here we took inspiration from Japanese musical forms such as Gagaku and Shômyô music and Kabuki theatre to explore the particular sonorities of traditional instruments and how they express a sense of ritual — a central quality of the tatami tea room and it’s ceremonies which form the overarching design concept for this section.
As design features such as skylights, animated paper screens, vistas and windows marry the interior and exterior in a dreamy atmosphere — the sounds created by the instruments blend with the textural sounds of the everyday urban environment of the Edo period, combining to suggest a sense of a wider world beyond the walls of the gallery.
Room 2 — Kimono in the world
Our research into what the musical equivalent of Japonisme might be led us to analyse Japanese influences in European Art Music in the period following the 1854 treaty with Japan, after which cultural exchange between Japan and the West flourished. The influence of Japan on western music manifests itself through several key musical works and composers in the West around this time, notably in ‘The Mikado’ by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan (1885), Giacomo Puccini’s ‘Madame Butterfly’ (1904), several works by Claude Debussy (written between 1903 and 1907) and ‘Three Japanese Lyrics’ by Igor Stravinsky (1913).
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We decided to focus the soundscape for this section on the traces that can be felt of Japonisme in Debussy’s ‘La Mer’ as his work in particular exhibits a more material approach to the influences from the East that he was exposed to in Paris at the time: “Elements of nature, which feature prominently in the ukiyo-e, provide a link to many of Debussy’s pieces whose titles begin to evoke natural elements.” 1
Our soundscape takes ‘La Mer’ and processes it in numerous ways with the aim of highlighting some of the musical colours and textures that the landscapes of Ukiyo-e prints and the music Debussy had heard at the Paris Exhibition inspired him to write. These processed sonorities are choreographed over multiple speakers in the soundscape, such that they appear to drift through the space, infusing it with a kind of orchestral impressionism that seeks to evoke the spirit of Japonisme.
Room 3 — Kimono Transformed
The final room is dedicated to post-war designs and takes in the far-reaching influence of kimono on popular culture. Working with the iconic range of Japanese electronic musical instruments produced by firms like Yamaha, Roland, Korg and Akai — which have helped define modern popular music — we created a pointilist generative soundscape that allows visitors to contemplate the particular sonorities and expressivity of these synthetic instruments in spatial arrangements over multiple speakers, connecting them to the exquisite range of exhibits, Storey Studio’s dramatic scenography and Luke Halls Studio’s film installation.
Listen back to the soundscapes for each space via the player below. If you’d like to find out more about the exhibition soundscape projects we work on, head over to our website here.
