radio silence

2022 · Photographic and sound installation · 500m Museum, Sapporo
kugenuma — Kio Griffith + Chihiro Minato

A long black-and-white photographic landscape being installed behind glass in Sapporo’s underground walkway
Installation in progress, 500m Museum, Sapporo, 2022

radio silence is a radio for the age of distance. Created by kugenuma during the COVID-19 pandemic, the work takes the silence of a sealed glass display case as its starting material. A 24-metre photographic landscape extends through Sapporo’s underground walkway, connecting the stillness of images to sounds recorded in distant places.

QR codes embedded at the two ends of the landscape open separate left and right audio channels. Visitors could listen while walking, or play both channels on two devices, bringing geographically separated places into a shared listening space. The broadcasts were also accessible away from the exhibition, with a programme conceived as nine weekly pairings.

The first session brings together Kugenuma Beach in Kanagawa and Terminal Island in Los Angeles: two shores of the Pacific, heard separately or together. Later programmes addressed borders, isolation, and the changing sounds of daily life. The work also pays homage to John Cage’s 4′33″ and Toru Takemitsu, drawing the quiet and noise of a winter passageway into the act of listening.

Detail of the panoramic photographic collage behind glass, with snow-covered landscapes and architectural fragments
Detail of the photographic landscape
Oblique view along the radio silence installation behind glass in the underground walkway
Installation view along the underground walkway, 500m Museum, Sapporo
Installation detail showing overlapping rocky coastlines and a red horizontal line
Installation detail — layered coastlines and a red line, 500m Museum, Sapporo

Two shores of the Pacific

Session one pairs Kugenuma Beach and Terminal Island. Listen to either channel on its own, or open the two recordings on separate devices and play them together, following the installation’s original listening arrangement.

Left channel · Kugenuma Beach, Japan
Open the left channel on SoundCloud ↗

Right channel · Terminal Island, Los Angeles
Open the right channel on SoundCloud ↗

Explore the radio silence playlist ↗

Right-hand section of the original radio silence artwork, with a QR code embedded in the black-and-white landscape
A listening point within the landscape — right-hand panel, from the original artwork file
Left-hand panel combining rock, snow and shoreline imagery with an embedded QR code
Left-hand panel — from the original artwork file

Studies and details

Black-and-white collage combining circular microphone elements, landscape photographs and graphic lines
Concept collage for radio silence
Early concept collage combining a speaker, branching lines, a QR code and a historical photograph
Early concept study; the realized installation took a different form.

radio silence
2022
kugenuma — Kio Griffith + Chihiro Minato
Paper, ink, piezo microphones, internet
1,010 × 24,000 mm
Grand Prix (joint recipient), 9th Sapporo 500m Museum Award, 2022
Sapporo Odori Underground Walkway Gallery 500m Museum
February 12 – April 13, 2022

Related: oillusion · transit

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