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Enter the Tunnel is a 50.2-channel immersive sound installation conceived by Gil in 2021. It reimagines “listening” as an inner satoyama-like landscape in which sensory perception, emotion, and bodily awareness are constantly shifting. Rather than directly depicting the iconic landscapes of Echigo-Tsumari, such as its terraced rice fields, forests, and rivers, the work focuses on the idea of the “self as part of nature,” using sound to explore this inner landscape.

Within a completely dark space, sounds emerge from speakers positioned vertically and horizontally throughout the environment. They spread across walls, floors, and ceilings, tracing long trajectories as they move from front to back. At times dense and overwhelming, and at other times sparse and distant, cloud-like masses of sound move through the space. With each movement, visitors’ sense of scale and spatial orientation is subtly disrupted, creating sensations that their bodies are becoming smaller or larger, or that the room itself is contracting and expanding. Through sound and architecture, visitors move across different scales while the boundary between inside and outside gradually becomes blurred.

The work builds upon Gil’s previous multichannel works, including the 8.1-channel installation Not Here, Nor There – Aural Fields Zero, presented at the Newark Museum in New Jersey, USA, and at Contrast Gallery in Tokyo. At the same time, it shifts attention toward the gap between “what we expect to hear” and “the sound we actually experience.” Visitors become aware of how their inner emotional states, such as attention, memory, tension, and release, change from moment to moment in response to sound.

Ultimately, rather than taking visitors on a journey to some distant world, the installation seeks to allow them to encounter themselves anew through the act of listening.

Methods, Materials, and Dimensions

A 50.2-channel sound installation consisting of 50 full-range speakers and 2 subwoofers. Speakers are distributed across the walls, along the perimeter of the floor, and on the ceiling of a minimally lit space approximately 12 m long × 5–7 m wide × 3–4 m high, creating an immersive “cloud of sound.”

Handrails and flooring will use porous, acoustically transparent materials. At the entrance, a reflective carpet will be incorporated into the installation, making fluctuations in sound visible as reflections of light.

Relationship Between the Venue and Echigo-Tsumari

This project follows Echigo-Tsumari’s long-standing practice of revitalizing existing buildings as artworks, accommodation facilities, and community spaces by transforming an ordinary private house into the venue for the work. Rather than using a hypothetical site, the project will take place in an existing building already acquired by the artist.

The venue is an empty house in Shimojo, Tokamachi City, locally known as Yamaki Residence.

For decades, Yamaki Residence was a place where local residents gathered for important occasions such as weddings, birthday celebrations, and funerals, as well as to discuss everyday life and issues facing the community. The house accumulated layers of the sounds of life: laughter, tears, music, everyday conversations, and the sounds of major transitions in people's lives.

A house that once brought people together around meals and rituals will now be renewed as a place where people gather around listening, creative technology, and good coffee.

The building is currently being transformed into a small cultural hub operated by artists and their collaborators. Educational programs, live music events, and a range of locally focused activities have already begun. Enter the Tunnel is conceived as a permanent sound installation that will become a new focal point for these activities. Working in conjunction with existing educational programs and live music events, it aims to increase visitors to Shimojo and create a place where local residents can return to Yamaki Residence, encounter one another again, and reconnect with the site.

Equally important, during the off-season, the installation will function as a research facility for spatial acoustics, listening practices, and participatory formats. It will serve as core infrastructure for an international artist-in-residence program, welcoming artists, musicians, and researchers from Japan and abroad. It will provide a place for creating and experimenting with new works, while also creating opportunities to return knowledge and experience to local children and young people.

In this way, the project seeks to rekindle the area by combining the power of art, research, and community service. The history of a house that has witnessed life's important transitions, from marriage and death to celebrations, will be expanded through the experience of stepping into the interior of a tunnel, creating a space for exploring another kind of threshold: an internal threshold where self-awareness and sensory perception transform.

Visitor Experience (Experience and Visitor Flow)

The following text can be used as wall text, a guide, or a description of the visitor experience.

At first glance, you are entering an ordinary house, one that could be anywhere. Take off your shoes at the entrance and go up to the second floor. A single door awaits you, marked with a small abstract text.

The tunnel is both a “vessel” and a “medium”: a technological bridge connecting the here and now with an unknown destination.

The journey begins with tension. As the gap gradually widens between the expectation of “how I should feel” inside the tunnel and “what I am actually feeling,” a sense of uncertainty and instability emerges. Where is this tunnel taking me, and why? Neither the destination nor the route is clear.

Eventually, as resistance begins to dissolve, the tunnel’s primal language emerges: textured sound, light, pressure, and movement. Vast cloud-like masses of sound travel back and forth through the structure, passing with a distinct sense of direction. Their overwhelming presence rewrites our sense of scale and redirects the arrow of consciousness inward.

As you move deeper into the tunnel, the focus narrows toward the self itself.

How should I feel? And what am I actually feeling right now?

The journey gradually becomes introspective, ultimately reflecting the self from a different angle, like a mirror tilted diagonally.

Open the door. Enter the completely dark room, walk up the ramp, and stand at the center.

Allow yourself to surrender to the sound.

Over the course of a 20–30 minute cycle, visitors move through stages of tension → loss of orientation → acceptance → deep introspection.

The work encourages visitors to become aware not only of the sounds they hear, but also of how they are listening. The installation is designed to direct attention toward subtle changes, such as how the body's center of gravity shifts while standing on the platform, how breathing changes, and whether the passage of time begins to feel faster or slower.

Technical Overview

• Format: 50.2-channel sound installation (50 full-range speakers + 2 subwoofers)

• Spatial dimensions: Approximately 12 m long × 5–7 m wide × 3–4 m high. The installation is envisioned for a large room or connected rooms on the second floor of a typical Japanese house, but can also be adapted to school buildings and other architectural environments.

• Speaker placement: Speakers are distributed across walls, along the perimeter of the floor, and on the ceiling, enabling sound to move in front/back, left/right, and up/down directions. Particular emphasis is placed on creating long front-to-back trajectories and an immersive “cloud of sound.”

• Spatial audio processing: A custom multichannel design using object-based or bus-based routing will allow precise control over the movement of sound masses, subtle textures, distance, and dynamic changes in perceived scale.

• Lighting: Minimal, precisely controlled lighting, such as very subtle edge lighting or point sources, will be used to emphasize the movement of sound without excessively revealing the architecture. If necessary, a thin layer of fog or haze may be introduced so that light can make the “volume” of the sound perceptible.

• Operation and presentation: The installation will operate continuously in a 20–30 minute loop. A limited number of visitors will enter at designated times to ensure an environment conducive to focused experiences.

• Sound level: Sound will be maintained at a level that can be strongly felt physically while remaining safe for extended listening. Acoustic treatment and sound absorption will be implemented with consideration for neighboring residences and the surrounding sound environment.

• Off-season use: The system and space will continue to function as a permanent research platform for spatial acoustics research, new sound composition, and experimentation within the artist-in-residence program.

Community and Education Programs

Building on Echigo-Tsumari’s emphasis on community, memory, and long-term relationships, the following programs are planned for Enter the Tunnel:

• Listening workshops / lectures: Experiential workshops and talks for local residents and visiting students exploring how attention, memory, and environment influence the perception of sound.

• Sound walks: Sound walks connecting the installation with the surrounding settlements, rice fields, rivers, and satoyama soundscapes. Participants will experience a dialogue between the “inner sound tunnel” and the “outer” sounds of water, wind, insects, snow, and everyday life in Shimojo.

• Off-season laboratory use: The installation will also function as an experimental laboratory for an international artist-in-residence program. Invited artists will use the tunnel to prototype new spatial sound works and share their processes through workshops with local schools and organizations, small-scale presentations, and open studios.

Through these activities, advanced acoustic technology and experimental art will be introduced in connection with everyday life in the community. The project will create opportunities for people of all ages, from children to adults, to encounter cutting-edge sound art, learn new skills, and participate directly in the creation of new works.

Contribution to Echigo-Tsumari

Enter the Tunnel strongly resonates with Echigo-Tsumari’s mission of connecting art, nature, and regional revitalization.

• Utilization of an existing house in Shimojo (Yamaki Residence): Respecting the history of a house that has served as a place for community gatherings and celebrations, the project gives it a new role as a center for listening, research, and international exchange.

• Internalizing the theme that “humans are also part of nature”: The project expands our relationship with nature beyond external landscapes to include changes in inner nature, such as perception and emotion. It offers visitors an opportunity to reconsider the landscapes that emerge within themselves as part of natural processes.

• Long-term infrastructure for education and residency: In addition to functioning as a large-scale artwork during the Triennale, the installation will become infrastructure supporting ongoing educational and residency programs in Tokamachi after the festival period.

• Ripple effects for regional revitalization: By attracting artists, researchers, and audiences from Japan and abroad to Shimojo, the project aims to increase use of surrounding shops and accommodation while strengthening connections between local residents and international cultural networks.

In this way, Enter the Tunnel functions not only as an immersive sound installation but also as a “house for listening.”

As a place where the external landscape meets the internal landscape, the project seeks to create a new chapter in the history of Yamaki Residence, allowing it to continue as a living place for gathering, dialogue, and introspection.