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The era of VR entertainment is upon us. In the wake of Abba’s ongoing, vastly successful digital-avatar Voyage residency, and following the announcement that an Elvis Presley hologram will soon be hitting the West End, a rather more low-key, intimate virtual delight is unfolding in north London.
Kagami (“mirror” in Japanese) is a collaboration between mixed-reality production studio Tin Drum and Ryuichi Sakamoto, the composer, actor and electronic music pioneer — he co-founded “Japan’s Kraftwerk”, the Yellow Magic Orchestra, in the 1970s — who died last year. The audience don “optically transparent devices” (essentially VR headsets) and watch a virtual Sakamoto play 10 songs at a grand piano.
Director Todd Eckert, who in 2020 filmed Sakamoto for three days via 48 cameras, each capturing 60 frames per second, calls it a “groundbreaking mixed-reality concert”. He also claims it “perpetuates the relationship between artist and audience beyond the limitations of life and time,” which, frankly, is pushing it a bit.
Nevertheless, it is a diverting spectacle. As the audience sit in the round and the lights dim, the virtual Sakamoto appears at his instrument as if by magic, impassive in grey suit and tortoise-shell specs under his silver thatch of Warhol hair. Special effects make it appear as if white clouds are swirling around his feet.
You are permitted to leave your seat and approach the projection to scrutinise it in detail. It’s a thrill to stand right next to the ghostly Sakamoto as his elegant fingers dance across the keys and his feet caress the pedals. It’s transfixing to be so close to genius, or at least to its meticulous re-enactment.
The virtual Sakamoto does not look convincingly human. The image is a little too spectral for that, his skin oddly waxy. Yet you find you empathise with him as he weaves through gentle, serene symphonies such as “Aoneko no Torso”. You feel like laying an encouraging, or congratulatory, hand on his shoulder.
The ghostly Sakamoto speaks to the audience before revisiting the gorgeous, halting melody of his 1999 piece “Energy Flow”, marvelling that it reached number one in the Japanese chart: “I don’t know why that was!” As it ends, it’s tempting to follow traditional concert etiquette and applaud. A few people do.
The digital trickery does its work. As Sakamoto eases through his beatific 1983 movie theme for Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (in which he also starred), a bare winter tree appears to emerge from the floor and burrow through his piano. Virtual raindrops then fall around him, and among the audience. You instinctively try to catch one.
The phantom Sakamoto speaks one more time, explaining that he composed the closing “BB” minutes after hearing of the death, in 2018, of his friend Bernardo Bertolucci (for whom he composed the Oscar-winning score for 1987 movie The Last Emperor). The previously unheard piece is elegiac and beautifully measured.
Even groundbreaking tech has its limits, but Sakamoto’s relatively recent demise imparts this curious, engrossing show with poignant intimations of mortality.
★★★★☆
To January 21, roundhouse.org.uk
