Why I Brought Scent and Sound into a Calligraphy Show

Setting the Air Before the Wall

Preparing my solo show in Azabu-Juban, I spend almost as long on what scent to place in the room and what sound to lay under it as I do on the works on the wall. Say you are putting fragrance and sound into a calligraphy show and it can sound like too much production. My thinking is the opposite. Scent and sound are not decoration added to the work; they are closer to subtraction — a way to bring the viewer's breathing into step with the line before they reach it.

Calligraphy is quiet. A single line drawn on a half-sheet does not raise its voice. So if someone walks in carrying the speed of the station crowd or the unfinished workday and stands at the wall at that pace, the slowness of the line never reaches them, and they pass by. I cannot change the work. What I can change is the one minute of air before they stand in front of it.

One Incense, at the Entrance

On the day I could borrow the empty room, I tested a few scents in front of the bare walls before anything was hung. Then I walked the room end to end. The scent pooled near the entrance and thinned toward the back; under the air-conditioning vent there were spots where it scattered the moment it was lit. What I settled on was a single thread of jinkō incense near the entrance — not the whole room. Fill a room with fragrance and within five minutes the nose adjusts and stops noticing it. That defeats the point. I want a visitor to pass through the scent once at the door, and then to view the work as it fades. Works written in pine-soot ink return a faint smell of ink when you step close; the incense is not the lead, only a cue that opens the nose toward that ink. Why calligraphers burn incense before writing at all, I wrote about in Calligraphy and Incense.

Not Playing a Melody

With sound, I once failed plainly. At a certain venue I simply played music, and the melody came out in front of the work — people walked in time with the beat. The rhythm decided the speed of looking. Calligraphy and music do share a language of rhythm and breath, which I wrote about in Calligraphy and Music. But listening while you write and making people listen in front of the work are, I now think, entirely different decisions.

So what I lay under the show is a low, sustained sound with no melody, kept quiet enough not to erase the visitors' footsteps or the sense of the paper holding air. What I want from sound is that it gives no direction. A melody says "this way next" and dictates the order of looking; a shapeless low sound only floors the room's quiet and lets the viewer begin anywhere. Scent opens the nose, sound slows the feet, and only then — one breath slower — do I want someone to stand before the line. Dates and directions are on the Zen exhibition page. Neither scent nor sound is the work. They are another margin I set outside the wall, to settle the breathing of the person who came to see.