aida by Arturas Bumšteinas & Viktorija Makauskaitė

“aida” was created as a ten-channel soundtrack for the exhibition “Beauties, Ghosts, and Samurai. The Japanese Pop Culture Tradition from Edo Ukiyo-e to Manga, Anime, and Sūpā Furatto in the 20th and 21st Centuries” — http://www.ndg.lt/exhibitions/past/beauties,-ghosts,-and-samurai.aspx — (curated by dr. Arūnas Gelūnas, architecture by Išora x Lozuraitytė Studio, lighting by Eugenijus Sabaliauskas, sound engineering by Vytautas Narbutas) which took place in the National Gallery of Art of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art between July and October of 2024.

This soundtrack consists of music played on various Japanese synthesizers, multi-tracked together with manipulated field recordings of Tokyo’s urban ambiences recorded by Viktorija Makauskaitė (who relocated from Vilnius to Japan in 2009). The title of this continuous, almost three-hour-long spatial sound work is “aida”, which in Japanese means “the distance between things” or simply “between”. In Lithuanian, “aida” is the feminine form of the noun “echo”.

In the vast space of the exhibition hall this soundtrack was played on a very low volume, barely detectable by the visitors, who mainly reported that the sensation of the sound’s presence was something of a ghostly emanation from the visual artworks on display. During the opening of the exhibition, the chatter of the crowd completely absorbed the soundtrack, once again raising the question of functionality of the accessory sound design in a visual art show.

Arturas Bumšteinas is a Lithuanian composer and sound artist working since the end of the 1990s. He was the first Lithuanian artist to use the Internet to collaborate with people from around the world. Since the early 2000s he initiated many projects, exhibited around Europe, performed in various festivals, and was a guest at many residencies. For a while, he lived in Berlin (DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm); he curated the Jauna Muzika festival and published around 50 releases of his sound works. He lives in Vilnius and is currently working within the “instruction scores” discipline. http://arturasbumsteinas.com

Viktorija Makauskaitė is a Lithuanian architect and artist based in Japan. She uses photography, drawing, craft, and text as her artistic medium, often exploring their interconnection. A part of her work stems from architectural upbringing through observation and engagement with sound and space. She is interested in exploring the connection between ourselves and place, the alive and inanimate worlds around us. Viktorija sees art as an opportunity to redefine one's ground and establish new links with adopted and abandoned places, languages, and communities. http://viktorija-makauskaite.com

Crónica is an artist-run, non-profit label dedicated to sound art and electronic, computational, and experimental music.

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