Life and Death in Moog City
Organic Machinery, Part Three: The sounds of Tokyo
This is the third post in my series on travels in south east Asia. Here are the other two
Moog City
A friend visiting Hiroshima texts me "Why does everything sound so loud here?"I'm standing at a crosswalk in Tokyo and I don't need to think twice about what she's referring to because the light turns green and starts emitting beeps. I find them rather melodic and I pretend I'm in Minecraft. I don’t know what she's complaining about.
Tokyo is a city of beeps and boops.
I spent my first night in Tokyo in the quiet suburb of Koiwa. I looked it up on Reddit on the night of my arrival and read that the train station is infamous for people jumping onto the tracks. So when I first encountered the sound of birds chirping at the Koiwa station, I thought it was an exception. I assumed they installed the sound to soothe people who may be thinking of jumping onto the tracks. The little chirp in the middle of all this metal clanking, electronic beeping and wind swooshing would somehow convince someone at the noose end about the beauty of life. They’ll find joy in the little things and decide not to kill themselves. But, I found out the next day that the chirping bird sounds are in every station in Tokyo.
A different variation of the chirping sounds is emitted from the Tokyo signals:
I walk by a cemetery the next day. The autumn foliage covers the narrow street running down the middle of cemetery. It's a cold rainy day and the glass buildings in the distance are an icy background to the tombs. It is quiet except for the chirping of birds, and it is quite remarkable how close the real chirps are to the digital ones (recording below).
I'm reminded of an exhibit that I saw at Bangkok Biennale a week earlier - Suskewiet Visions. The artwork is based on a traditional Flemish game called Vinkensport (Dutch for Finch sport) played in the Dutch part of Belgium. In it, players make their game finches compete against each other for the maximum number of chirps and melodies. The judges record the chirps as notations on a stick. A full melody of the finch is called a Suskewiet.
Like all games involving animals, cruelty is inevitable, so the artist puts a twist on the idea - what if you used the same set of steps to simply observe and record the sounds in the environment? The artist creates different notations for different types of sounds.
At the biennale, I saw several sticks that were marked with these notations.
In Tokyo, I decide to create notations to record the beeps and bops of the city. I buy a cheap little notebook and marker from the first store I come across and create notations of my own.
In one of the subways I notice that sometimes the beeps and boops complete a full melody. I added the melody notation in the note above after noticing it for the first time. There is a melody before the train arrives, there is a melody when the train leaves, and some trains have melodies for every stop. Here are the melodies for the Yamanote line:
I capture the sounds the best I could, while waiting for trains, walking along the streets and sometimes sidestepping an on rushing crowd when I hear a new sound.
I find that the Yamanote line jingle and several others are made by the same company called Ongakukan, which was founded by Minoru Mukaiya. Mukaiya is an accomplished musician who played for the Japanese jazz fushion band Casiopea. Then sometime in the late 90s he decided to make train melodies and a train simulator game. I learn that he's made over 100 melodies for Japanese trains
On my last day in Tokyo, I vist Yoyogi park and sit by the bridge that overlooks the wire fenced Meiji Shrine garden that borders the park. There are several new bird sounds here. I record them in the notebook. These were the only non-digital sounds I jotted down.
Slop City
I got back to the United States and in a state of uninspired desperation wondered - what if I ask ChatGPT to create notations resembling mine? But instead of the environment, ChatGPT would assess the timbre and tone of conversations and posts online, or even screenplays.
I upload a previous Substack post and screenshots of the script of the movie The Departed.
The LLM does come up with a surprisingly clever set of notations but somehow I feel disappointed. All the data it generates barely registers in my memory and I can't bring myself to care about it. I also sense that I've less respect for the Suskiwiet visions exhibit now. I know its not rational but I value the output of the artist a little less now.
Somehow I manage to the turn my little Tokyo doodle into a pile of slop that I don't give a shit about, but the memories remain. The cold Tokyo breeze, the first bite of a 7/11 fruit sandwich, and the light turning green. Beep. Bop. Off I go.
This might be your most creative piece yet!
People who sleep on the train, and blind people, love the train ditties.
Japanese seem to enjoy being in a certain social flow more than Westerners, on average.
Consider summer festivals in Japan and how crowds come together, chanting while carrying shrines on their shoulders. I think Tokyoites feel connected to these sounds in a similar way.