"Kodama: Hisako Yamakawa"
2006-04-15 until 2006-05-13
InterAccess Media Arts Centre
Toronto, ON, CA Canada

InterAccess is pleased to present KODAMA, an interactive sound installation by Japanese artist Hisako Yamakawa that imagines “voice” as a physical object by illustrating how it floats through space. In the exhibition, Hisako has created a virtual forest inhabited by tree fairies that capture and play with the viewer’s voice. KODAMA is presented in association with the 19th Annual Images Festival, April 13-22, 2006.

“KODAMA” are tree fairies that live in the forest and are invisible to the human eye. They quietly listen to voices, trapping them in bubbles of air and storing them; when a member of the audience talks and puts out a “voice,” it becomes a mass of air and is inhaled by the forest. “KODAMA” remain silent until there is no human noise or movement in the gallery, at which point they play with the voices that have been left in the forest. These “echoes” are the mischievous way that the forest fairies manipulate sounds.

About the piece Hisako states, “Human voices are invisible and easy to forget, yet I often have the feeling that voices are tactile and occupy a certain space that I want to artistically represent as various volumes or solid shapes. I created KODAMA to demonstrate my sensation of solidified human voices in conversation”.

Hisako Yamakawa graduated from the Fine Arts department at the Kyoto City University of Art with a degree in Sculpture in 2001 and received her Master's in Development of Media Creation from the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences (Japan) in 2004. Hisako’s artworks explore the “trifling cause,” taking mundane elements of the everyday and expressing the tactile qualities that make them things of beauty. A North American premiere, KODAMA combines her background in sculpture with a newly found interest in digital technologies. KODAMA is presented by InterAccess in partnership with the Images Festival. InterAccess gratefully thanks the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

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