‘Humancicada’ has its origins in the time when Miyuki Inoue went into the woods to find a place to sing. She recorded her voice and cicada insects and made sound installations from the recordings. This time, Miyuki wants to create a participatory sound sculpture in which the audience is invited to sing together to become part of the work. Miyuki Inoue is attracted to the sound of the cicadas because it has a pleasant frequency for the human ear (4 kHz). People like the sound when it’s far enough; They hate it when it is too close.
It is also because she is attracted by the sound of a group, especially when it feels like synchronized. Cicada’s sound organ has a similar structure to the human vocal cord. Both have an object to vibrate, a muscle to move it and a cavity to amplify this.
Miyuki wants to inspire people with her practice of imitating cicadas: Since it was a liberation for her to imitate her non-human sound with “unusual voices”, she wants others to try this in her sound sculptures.
The challenge with this work is to make the audience feel that what they are hearing feels natural. To do so, Miyuki wants to create a structure that hides the singer, much like cicadas that are hidden. The artist will develop a technological system that collects the voices of the singers during the exhibition and synchronizes them with the original sounds, so that all voices merge; similar to how the cicadas synchronize with each other.
Supported by Mondriaan Fonds