The rumble echoes ominously throughout the building.

It feels like an earthquake, or perhaps a powerful tornado. The sound is like the deep sonorous vibrations you can feel standing beneath a railway overpass. What is it? Before my brain can reach a conclusion, a second sound replaces the first. A disturbing, digital drone.

As I listen closer, I can hear the electronic components of the noise echoing off the various surfaces in the building. This is more than just noise, though. It is a rhythm, first constant, then broken. The space is filled with a harmonic assortment of sounds that somehow recall the euphony of nature.

Today is the opening day of a special exhibition by media artist Yoichi Ochiai, held in the Kusakabe Mingeikan in Takayama City, Gifu Prefecture, and entitled “Animistic Randomness from the Divine Null: Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe – Circle, Mandala, Triangle”.

A valuable example of Edo era and Hida-Takayama regional architecture, with its exposed crossbeams and lattice bay windows, the Kusakabe Mingeikan has been designated as a Nationally Important Cultural Property. Since 2021, this historical building has played host to collaborations with Ochiai as he hosts his special exhibitions presenting his key concept of “digital nature”. The strange sound I heard echoing through the building at the start of this piece was the product of a new instrument created by Ochiai himself: the Enku synth, made by combining a modular synthesizer with a carved wooden Enku Buddha statue.

An Enku synth, created by combining a modular synthesizer with a carved wooden Enku Buddha statue. Next to the statue is an example of the world’s first digital musical instrument, the theremin, invented in the 1920s.

The theme of this year’s exhibition is the syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism. As a symbol of this theme, a shrine has been erected in one corner of the building, dubbed the Digital Nature Shrine, and dedicated to the God of Null. “Null” is used in its computing sense, to mean “nothing at all”. In the Kojiki, many different gods appear during the creation of the heavens and the earth. Ochiai’s unique slant on this event is that there must also be a god of nothingness. To “create” a god in this way is crazy enough, but Ochiai has even created a heavenly body for the God of Null to inhabit: the “One Buddha, Five Sweetfish, Eight Eels, Triangular-Rimmed Buddha and Beast Mirror”. To open the exhibition, furthermore, he has promised to stage a foundation ceremony to summon the god, at which he himself will participate as a priest.

The creation of a shrine, a god, a heavenly body, and then to stage a foundation ceremony and take a role in that ceremony himself as a priest. To go this far in his endeavour to express his conception of the syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism truly sums up Ochiai’s commitment to media art, but the surprises do not stop there. Within the foundation ceremony, Ochiai will himself brew tea with which to make an offering to the god.

This is the major reason that I have made the trip to Takayama to see this exhibition.

In recent years, tea has begun to play a more significant role within Ochiai’s artworks and activities. His permanent exhibition at the Miraikan – The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, entitled “Digitally Natural – Naturally Digital”, features a 3D modelling of Raku Kichizaemon XVI’s Raku ware tea bowl, using aluminium to perfectly recreate the shape and weight of the original. Over the years he has also created a number of tea houses, including this year’s “Null-An”, a tea house made using lenses, curved mirrors and speakers. He also wrote a year-long serialized account of his learning of the tea ceremony from the tea master Soukou Kitami for the Urasenke Tea School journal “Tanko”.

In this way, Yoichi Ochiai has not only demonstrated his affinity for tea culture, but proactively incorporated it into his own works of art. Wishing to talk to him about his views on tea and its culture, I decided to come and watch Ochiai’s tea ceremony to open his special exhibition at the Kusakabe Mingeikan, where he has been gracious enough to grant me a little of his valuable time.

Tea prepared before the God of Null

The sun’s rays shine down gloriously upon the dirt floor doma room in the centre of the Kusakabe Mingeikan where the foundation ceremony is due to be staged. While this room normally features an exposed concrete floor, it has been strewn with sand for the purpose of creating the shrine, to create a border between sacred and unconsecrated ground. With many guests packed into a small space, the grounds of the shrine are full.

It is just after nine o’clock in the morning. Led in by Chief Priest Nobuyuki Miyazawa of Kurumayama Shrine in the mountaintops of Shinano, who will take charge of today’s ceremony, the rest of the official party consists of Ochiai, in full priest regalia, and some mikoshrine maidens. The ceremony begins with a ritual prayer, followed by the summoning of the God of Null into the shrine’s mirror, and the shrine maidens performing an Urayasu no Mai dance, before it is time for Ochiai’s tea ceremony.

“An offering of tea by Mr. Yoichi Ochiai.”

Announced by one of the shrine maidens, Ochiai steps forth. Tucking his shaku into the folds of his kimono, he takes the teacup from the altar, and takes it to where his tea set has been prepared.

In the silence of the shrine, the only sound is of the movement of Ochiai’s hands.

Even though the ceremony has been somewhat abbreviated, it is still a sacred act. The place is filled with nervous tension, while Ochiai’s face is pure focus. Scooping water from the pot, he diligently pours it through the whisk in the act of “chasen-toshi”. He then spoons some powdered tea into the teacup. Water from the furo is ladled carefully into the cup and whisked with the chasen.

Watching his deliberate actions gives us a glimpse of Ochiai the tea artist, as distinct from Ochiai the media artist. Offering the tea he has made at the altar, Ochiai lines up his tools to complete the ceremony. The tamagushi offering is then made, before the Digital Nature Shrine foundation ceremony is concluded with the imbibing of sacred sake by the attendees.

Tea as an intermediary presence

Following the conclusion of the ceremony, the attendees are served with the remainder of the tea prepared by Ochiai. This special tea, accompanied by traditional sweets and consumed in the historical and atmospheric surrounds of the Kusakabe Mingeikan, leaves a lasting impression.

After this, Ochiai gives a gallery talk concerning his exhibition,

during which he touches on the importance of tea as it intersects with media art and his artworks.

“The word ‘media’ is simply the plural of ‘medium’, meaning an intervening substance through which something is conveyed,” he begins. “It was Yanagi Soetsu who, in Japan’s first photography magazine, ‘Koga’, in 1932, wrote that ‘photographs are a key medium via which our instincts can be activated in this modern age.’ My conception of media art is that it is an art form in which the medium itself is consciously selected. That’s why I myself have staged many media-conscious exhibitions of Japanese culture, and I believe that tea is another very media-conscious element of that. Just think about what you have to do when you make tea – you think very carefully about which hand you wish to hold your tools in for a start. Already, that’s media consciousness. I see tea as a cultural medium with an extremely high level of affinity with the media arts.”

Tea as media art. While I understand what Ochiai is saying here, I decide I need to dig a little deeper when I get the chance to interview him later.

After his talk is complete, and after he finishes his other media commitments and a final check of the exhibits, Ochiai sits down to talk to me.

First, I ask him to look back on the tea ceremony he has just completed.

“Having learned the art of tea, I thought that it would be a good idea to incorporate it into the foundation ceremony, but it wasn’t until I actually did it that I understood how difficult an official tea dedication is,” he tells me with a self-deprecating laugh. “It’s the presentation of tea to the gods, so it is by no means the same as simply preparing a cup of rich tea. The steps are different: there’s no adding of additional charcoal, for example, which makes the movements in and around the furo that much more indicative of the essence of the way of tea. I made about three different mistakes during the ceremony, but I’m still very glad I had the opportunity to do it. I was able to reconfirm for myself the joys of the tea ceremony, one of which is the fact that the proscribed processes include the act of resolving every action you begin.”

I decide to ask Ochiai to reiterate what it is that tea means to him now. His relationship with tea seems to be deepening all the time, but I want to know how exactly that relationship began.

“My family has always had an interest in the tea ceremony, so we even had a tearoom in our house,” he explains. “It’s not like I was that interested in it when I was a child, but it was always something with which I had an affinity. I always felt at home in the tearoom, with its seasonal plants, its hanging scroll, its flowers. Since adulthood, though, my ties with tea have become stronger, whether it’s creating a Raku tea bowl using 3D printing technology, making the “Plastic Hermitage” tea house using plastic Gundam model runners, or learning the art of tea as a project in the magazine ‘Danko’.” 

I can see how coming from an unusual background of having a tearoom in his house from childhood has helped inform the development of Ochiai as a media artist. I also find it fascinating that tea, which helped develop the creativity and philosophy at the heart of his work, has now come to be incorporated in it as a motif more frequently.

So how did he come to use tea in his work? As Ochiai said earlier, “tea is a media art”. Perhaps that has something to do with it? In the second half of the article, we explore the meaning of tea culture as Ochiai sees it.

Yoichi Ochiai
Media artist. Born in 1987, he began working as an artist from around 2010. Seeing media art as as a vernacular, popular art dealing with digital nature, his activities transcend the boundaries of art and research, and continue to follow his stated philosophy of “confronting the objectification of the digital and the natural, and ruminating on the longing and emotion between object and image.” Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba. Thematic Project Producer for Expo 2025 Osaka. With a strong interest in tea culture, he has frequently incorporated tea as a motif in his artworks and exhibitions in recent years.
yoichiochiai.com (official website)
note.com/ochyai (note)

Kusakabe Mingeikan Special Exhibition: Yoichi Ochiai’s “Animistic Randomness from the Divine Null: Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe – Circle, Mandala, Triangle” 
Exhibition Period: September 14 (Sat) 〜 November 4 (Mon), 2024
Opening Hours: 10:00 AM 〜 4:00 PM
Location: Kusakabe Mingeikan (Oshinmachi 1-52, Takayama City, Gifu Prefecture)
kusakabe-mingeikan.com (Kusakabe Mingeikan homepage)

Photo by Tameki Oshiro
Text (originally in Japanese) by Rihei Hiraki
Edit by Yoshiki Tatezaki
Produce by Nanami Kanai