This work is installed at the end of a small room in the back of the gallery South.
It is an interactive work in which the viewer wears headphones of a crystal radio displayed on a desk, and places the receiver’s needle on the crystal in search of faint sounds to detect.
The crystal radio was inspired by a description written by the artist’s grandfather in the 1930s when he was working as an earthquake observer at the Volcano Research Institute in Aso, Japan, and in his lonely life atop a mountain, he built his own radio to connect with the outside world.
For the exhibition that she participated in at the Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto in 2015, the artist collaborated with her father to create this piece using a crystal from her childhood near Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA, a small town in the desert developed to develop an atomic bomb.
This crystal radio, which disappeared in the 1940s with the development of germanium diodes and other devices, was the earliest system of radios, which did not use electricity, but instead allowed AM radio reception through headphones containing minerals, coils, and salt crystals. In this exhibition, the audio of the artist’s interview with the volunteer staff at Kyoto Art Center about his memories of the mud is faintly audible.
