Yui Arakawa Slows a Closed Shutter in Osaka Until It Holds Its Breath
In the Shin-Orime arcade after 10 p.m., an ambient composer tapes a microphone to a pole, presses it to a fishmonger's steel shutter and drops the reel to half speed.
The microphone is a small condenser taped to a bamboo pole. Yui Arakawa presses it against the shutter of a shuttered fishmonger, 10:12 p.m., Shin-Orime arcade, and the reel machine at her feet starts to turn.
The shutter hums. Most people have never noticed. It sits right around 120 Hz, which is the second harmonic of the 60 Hz mains in Osaka, leaking from the strip light above the next stall. That is a slightly flat B2. Sing it and you will feel it in your sternum.
She records at 7.5 inches per second on ferric tape from a box of ten she bought at a school clearance. Then she plays it back at 3.75. Everything drops an octave. The hum goes to a slightly flat B1, round and soft, like a cello left alone in a car.
The slats do the rest. At normal speed they tick when the arcade cools, a dry little rattle. At half speed each tick stretches into a slow creak, one every two seconds or so. The hum swells under it, stops short of anything, and waits. It sounds like someone in the next room deciding not to cough.
That is the held breath. Nothing is added. She does not use reverb. The tape is slightly rough on the high end, which gives the hum a pale grain, like breath on a cold window.
She has recorded eleven shutters so far. The fishmonger's is her favourite. The bakery's runs a half tone sharp and she says it sounds nervous.
At 10:40 a man walking home with a cake box stops, listens to the playback through her one speaker for a full minute, and asks which shop it is. She tells him. He says he buys his fish there. He walks on, slower.
