Visualizing Sound through Traditional Craft and Digital Technology

Hirokazu Kawana leads gekitetz Inc., a design studio working across design and engineering. Through R&D support, brand communication and related activities, he explores the value design can create.
The exhibition void reconstruct (ykgw); presents digital and two-dimensional works that use programming to visualize ambient sounds collected during an artist residency in Yokogawa, Hiroshima. Sounds and scenes recorded through fieldwork are reconstructed as a digital archive, expressing relationships between people and the city, local memories and a sense of place.
The two-dimensional works were made in collaboration with Rekiseisha, founded in the Meiji era. Layering digital images with traditional gold and silver leaf paper, the project brings together handcraft and computational design, traditional culture and digital archives. It explores new design approaches across research and prototyping.