Akira Ifukube
Exhibition Design & Display Case Production
Exhibition design for works by Akira Ifukube, presented as part of Akira Ifukube and Genichiro Kakegawa: Two Great Men of Hokkaido during the Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 (SIAF).
The exhibition was designed to resonate with the atmosphere of the venue, the Former Hokkaido Government Office, originally built in the Meiji period. Selected antique furniture from Hokkaido University, where Ifukube studied, was temporarily adapted as display cases, projection furniture, and exhibition panels.
An eight-meter-long piano-shaped display case was specially designed and constructed to present the original handwritten Ritmica Ostinata scores. The structure allows both sides of each sheet to be viewed – an idea requested by guest director Ryuichi Sakamoto during the score selection meeting with the designer.
- Client: Ryuichi Sakamoto / City of Sapporo
- Guest Director: Ryuichi Sakamoto
- Photography: Oliver Franz
- www.sapporo-internationalartfestival.jp
About Akira Ifukube by SIAF
- Composer Akira Ifukube was born in Kushiro, Hokkaido. Largely self-taught, Ifukube sought to compose quintessentially Japanese classical music, for example by incorporating traditional folk melodies into orchestral pieces. Ifukube’s powerful, ethnically flavored compositions were strongly influenced by his interactions with the indigenous Ainu people when he lived in the town of Otofuke, Hokkaido. Famous for film scores including the classic Godzilla, he is also remembered as a music educator, and composed soundtracks for the scientific films of renowned snow crystal researcher Ukichiro Nakaya. Among his best-known pieces are Ritmica Ostinata and Sinfonia Tapkaara.
