By focusing on the ear as founding element, and by linking
it to the ability of sight and of spatial perception, the
works of Akitsugu Maebayashi constantly trigger the communication
between the user and the Other.
"Audible Distance" (1997, at ICC), one of his most significant creations, is a very good example of this interaction. Three subjects, all equipped with virtual goggles, sensors of cardiac activity and broadcasting instruments, move around using the visualised cardiac pulse of other subjects as a real time reference. In such conditions, the other appears as an abstract computer graphic, symbolizing the cardiac pulse. That way the subjects experience a very different perception of the body and space.
"Sonic Interface" is his latest creation, in which a human being experiments with his own sense of hearing, its function having been amplified by technology, which in turn plays the role of an interface between the body and the environment. Equipped with a portable hearing device made of a computer and headphones, the subject is invited to enter and explore the urban jungle. Walking freely through public spaces such as shopping malls, train stations, and underground concourse in which he encounters random sound effects and levels, the subject perceives the sonic environment around him (including his own noises) in a modified sensory ambience.
Three different types of software feed the headphones in sequence: the mosaic of sounds, the amplified delay effects and sounds, which repeat themselves and overlap on each other like a millefeuille. The sonic ambience and the space in which the sounds were formed in the past are being remixed in the present. The subject, perceiving a shift between sight and sound finds himself in a new universe, liberated from unified perception.