This project is the first collaboration between vocalist Shoko Numao and flautist Wakana Ikeda as a duo. It explores music created collaboratively through dialogue grounded in individual experience, inspired by Walter Benjamin's ‘The Task of the Translator’, in which translation is understood not as a mere form of conveying information but as an art form that communicates the ineffable essence of a text.
The first stage involves fieldwork in different locations, focused not on predetermined goals but on chance encounters arising from standing still in time. Findings are shared by post, which involves asynchronous times of sending and receiving, and the travelling object itself, rather than digital means that synchronise all places into a single shared ‘now’.
Working with voice and flute – two instruments closely tied to the body rather than to digital technology – the process unfolds through repeated cycles of fieldwork and exchange, deliberately paced to accommodate the slowness of the post.
Wakana Ikeda is a flautist and composer. Shoko Numao is a vocalist and songwriter. Both are based in Japan.
