Silence spins - Seigen Ono + Ryuichi Sakamoto + Shiro Takatani (2012)

The teahouse, a collaboration between Ono, Sakamoto, and Takatani, is designed to minimize noise from the outside and echoes of sound from the inside, thereby engaging our unconscious sense of space. The special sound-absorbing material used inside draws attention to the sound it produces while at the same time delaying the reflection of high pitched sounds, thus creating a shift in the relationship between embodied sound and space. (Following Sharjah, 2013)

It is clear that it is the direct and reflected sound, which not only people perceive with their hearing, that perceives the space in 3D, and that vision only confirms it in retrospect.” Even for the visually impaired, information can be delivered directly to the visual cortex in the brain through training such as echolocation. In fact, this is a sense that we all use unconsciously in our daily lives.” Seigen Ono