Julius & Miki Yui, Aki Takahashi

Small music & small sounds

Rolf Julius and Miki Yui: an encounter of two artistic generations. Rolf Julius was born in 1939 and is regarded as one of the first and foremost representatives of sonic art; Miki Yui, more than 30 years younger, is one of the newly discovered talents of Tokyo’s sound-art scene. Since the two met a couple of years back, they have repeatedly worked together on projects and performances. For both their acquaintance is something very special and neither the difference in age and generation nor their different cultural backgrounds seem to play an important role in it. Rolf Julius and Miki Yui speak a unique common language. What they have in common is their interest in the manifoldness of the “small things”, in exquisite visual and acoustic textures, and in a kind of music that, according to John Cage, is free of traditional rules and regulations. Miki Yui calls them small sounds, Rolf Julius calls them small music. Like Rolf Julius, also Miki Yui dedicates herself to things and their states, they represent the material for and shape the structure of her small sounds. However, the small sounds can only be heard if they are paid attention and they can only unfold if we recognize them as part of a whole, as part of our environment, our history, our lives. Miki Yui’s sonic material stems from ordinary environments of every-day life. When it is recorded for her artistic projects, microphones and recording equipment function as an acoustic memory. The process of remembering seems to become of vital importance for composing: a continual re-arranging of fragments, shards and excerpts. When the small sounds are later played in a new and different spacial environment, they become (the) present, they react and interact with the respective space; and both, sounds and artist alike, may seem to the audience like “seeds of imagination”.
Melanie Uerlings