Music Plays Images X Images Play Music is a collaborative performance by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Toshio Iwai using music and images, first performed at Art Tower Mito in 1996. With Sakamoto striking the keys, performance data sent from his MIDI piano was instantly translated into images projected on a giant screen via Iwai’s programming to visualize the music. Further experiments in fusing music and visual media were also conducted. In one instance, images generated by Iwai bounced from the screen to play a piano and, in another, viewers were able to enjoy a session with Sakamoto using live broadcasting via the Internet, a technique relatively unknown at the time. In September of the following year, 1997, after enthralling the audience with their innovative performance, Sakamoto and Iwai won the Grand Prix (Golden Nica) in the Interactive Art category at Ars Electronica, a global media art festival held in Linz, Austria. In December of the same year, Sakamoto performed on his MIDI piano in a public experiment conducted at the “MPIXIPM” concert held at The Garden Hall in Ebisu, Tokyo. There, MIDI data performed by Sakamoto was distributed live to broadcast venues throughout Japan for remote performances on local pianos. These groundbreaking endeavors had a profound impact on subsequent media artists.
Sakamoto, who was always eager to use the new media of the times, incorporated the Internet into his creative practice from the early days of its inception. He also developed an early and active interest in experimenting with MIDI, a format that enabled his piano performances to be recorded and reproduced accurately.
For the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, two songs selected from MIDI data actually played by Sakamoto at Ars Electronica ’97, which were discovered among Iwai’s archives, were recreated and presented along with video data captured from the scene at the time. Iwai reconstructed the programming he had employed back then and used Sakamoto’s favorite MIDI piano to revive this legendary performance, which, in the form of an installation, has never aged. The exhibit enables visitors to glimpse—and aurally experience—Sakamoto’s origins as an artist who used cutting-edge media skillfully with playful creativity, and continually pursued and expanded the possibilities of expression through sound.