A Séance With Ryuichi Sakamoto at the Shed
“Kagami,” the new “mixed reality” concert of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music by the production company Tin Drum is meant to be a profound experience, a groundbreaking achievement in virtual reality that expands the visual limits of recorded performance. In practice, it feels like a wake in a laser tag arena. In some ways that’s unavoidable; Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most internationally recognized artists, died in March, so any presentation of his music so soon is hard pressed to avoid a funereal pallor. This one doesn’t escape that fate.
For the occasion, the Shed’s Griffin Theater greets guests with an antechamber cast in sepulchral light and hung with wall size images from Sakamoto’s life. Scenes from the 2017 documentary “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda” play on mute on the far wall — Sakamoto collecting rainwater in a bucket; sampling the sound of an ice floe in the Arctic Circle — which, out of context, seem more oblique than they really are.
The actual performance takes place beyond a curtain in an empty black box theater, which, materially speaking, stays that way. Besides the genial attendants who fit you with the required, vaguely steampunk headsets, and the presumably very expensive virtual projection equipment, there is nothing — no live performers, no props, no screens. You sit in the round, staring at a glowing, virtual red cube in the center of the room, which suggests a séance administered by an AV club.
Source: The New York Times
