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Eisuke Yanagisawa: "Water in borrowed landscapes"

  Tobias

There are some very interesting thoughts behind „Scenery of Water“. What got the project started?
I recorded sounds while traveling around South East Asia for my fieldwork study. I didn't have any idea about what to record, where to record, I just recorded what I felt interesting. After coming back to Japan and listening to the recordings, I discovered many of them included water-sounds. So I picked some up and compiled them. Some tracks are not dominated by water, but if you listen to them carefully, you can hear the sounds of water in all of these pieces.

 
In his blog, Jez Riley French supposed that none of the tracks on „Scenery of Water“ were unedited and contained „all that was recorded“. Is he correct?
Yes, all track are unprocessed except for a little amplification. And in several instances, I used diy binaural microphones with ear canal monitors. So what I heard at that time was exactly what I recorded.
 

What were your criteria for including a recording on „Scenery of Water“?
I roughly picked up the recordings based on aesthetic reasons and sound quality, then selected considering the balance among the tracks. Also, I place great importance on a recording strongly evoking the scenery or feeling from a particular moment in time.
 

Questions of recording are always crucial with field recordings. How did you solve the issue of, on the one hand, getting a clear sound of the water and on the other, of the surrounding scenery which was vital for your project as well?
Though sound quality matters, I didn't put much importance on getting clear sounds of water. Rather, I tried to capture the whole scenery. So I roughly captured the water within its environment rather than focusing on its pronounced own sound. if you like, I used the scenery as a borrowed landscape,
 

What was the most interesting insight you gained through „Scenery of Water“?
As I wrote in the sleeve notes, "...the sounds of water reflects the character of the space. And the space emerges through the sounds. In that sense, we may listen to the scenery through the water rather than listen to the water in the scenery". For me, this is a new way of perceiving the environment.


You state that „we can’t listen to the water itself. We can only hear the impact of water on something.“ In this respect, it is very much like the wind. Do you see some differences between the two nonetheless?
I agree, they are similar in that they need a medium or transducers to be heard. But I think they are different in that water usually creates complex rhythmic patterns, varied and rich tone/overtones – which is something wind usually lacks.

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