5D ARCHIVE DEPT.

This project preserves and communicates scenery and culture for the next generation through video. It is produced by Fukuoka’s KBC as a TV show promoting the local region on the theme of “traditional sound”. The sounds of traditional crafts (“playing” fibers on a Hakata-ori loom, making Japanese paper, planing wood chips) were recorded and edited to become the introduction for the song GARNET, by Kyushu idol group LinQ, who then performed it in a Hakata-ori studio. The title refers to a “department” that saves this fifth-dimensional data, a combination of the fourth (space-time) and first (sound) dimensions. The story goes that the beautiful young girl Hibiki Garnet has come from the future to this fictional department to film sounds, scenery and people’s ideas, and preserve them for later generations. It is a video archive of traditional technology mixed with contemporary sensibilities.

The sound of a Hakata-ori loom. The sound of a mortar pounding clay. The sound of Japanese paper being made. This gracefully anomalous regional promotion project conducted field recordings of these sounds “performed” by traditional culture that were mined from around Fukuoka Prefecture. These embedded were into a dance track, and then turned into a session with a local idol group in the crafts workshop. This isn’t Cool Japan. It’s Traditional Japan New Wave. (UKAWA Naohiro)