Tsukumo Cafe
What do you think about when you drink a cup of coffee? And do you have any idea what the coffee cup is thinking about? Try listening to the self-talk or “little voice” of the cup of coffee …
Tsukumo-café is a cup of coffee connected… to its interiority, to its soul, which as in the Japanese tradition of tsukumogami-emaki, appeared at the age of a hundred.. The cup is not only here to enable you to drink a cup of coffee… you can listen to its inner monologue and perhaps connect it to your own.
Technically, this is an immersive audio augmented reality system. The coffee cup is “augmented” with motion sensors and binaural 3D audio spatialization.
Our relationship with technology
The sound is heard through wireless bone-conduction headphones: the cup’s inner monologue is interactively generated following the user gestures… While connected objects constantly draw us towards an external world – real or virtual – the paradox proposed in the Tsukumo-café installation is to invest a poetic and symbiotic experience with an object with a mysterious and singular self-talk, thoughts and singing. It aims at transforming technological tools generally associated with the epic (i.e. the “augmentation” of an experience, of a human), to put them at the service of the melic (melody, expression of feelings). W
e propose to experience everyday actions in the perspective of the (imaginary) symbiosis between human and non-human. Thus this cup of coffee invites us to reconsider/interrogate various human and non-human relationships, as well as our use of technology.
The artist
Juliette SEJOURNE
Juliette Séjourné is an artist and performer intersecting theater, music and art installation.
Graduated from the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris and ENS (Cachan, Paris-Saclay), she performs in a variety of venues and contexts, from opera houses on international tour (Shanghai, Tianjin and Harbin opera houses) and concert halls (Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Théâtre de la Colline, Institut du Monde Arabe…) to interventions in basilicas, cinemas, greenhouses, gardens, social welfare centers, hospitals (Consultations Poétiques du Théâtre de la Ville) and scientific symposia.
Throughout her diverse creations, she investigates the “little inner voice” and its different forms of expression. This question merges with a broader reflection on “attention”: how are we attentive or distracted?
Juliette is accompanied by Frédéric BEVILACQUA, researcher. He is leading the “Sound Music Movement Interaction” team at IRCAM-STMS in Paris in gesture-based interactive sound systems.
