Ryoji Ikeda is strongly associated with precise audiovisual work and data-driven visual environments, yet the Barbican’s 2026 Portrait weekend focused on music for acoustic ensembles across strings, percussion and voice. I like that shift. An artist closely identified with digital precision can move the same thinking into physical performers and acoustic space. Artistic identity becomes more interesting when the method survives after the familiar tools disappear.
Experimental Music
Silencing Part of an Orchestra
Samson Young’s Muted Situation began with a deceptively simple idea: what happens if one layer of an event is deliberately removed from what we hear? In an orchestra, muting pitched sound can reveal breathing, movement and physical effort that music normally hides. I like the thought that silence does not necessarily mean absence. Sometimes removing the thing we expect to hear exposes an entirely different composition underneath it.
https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/magazine/samson-young-unheard-sounds/
mplus.org.hk Samson Young: Unheard Sounds | M+ Museum Artist Samson Young explains the origins of his Muted Sounds series, in which musicians are instructed to perform without creating music