First unveiled in 1974 at Tanaka Michi’s solo exhibition “Language Instruments—Every Word into Music,” this one-of-a-kind instrument features a sound-producing keyboard of characters arranged in the order of the katakana syllabary. Conceived as a fusion of Japanese phonetic notation and principles of musical structure, it assigns to each character a pitch that breaks away from twelve-equal temperament, storing language in the form of sound and opening up new possibilities in the space between sound and sign.
More than fifty years after its debut, The Language Instrument “Parole Singer” is reassembled here together with rare drawings by Takamatsu Jiro and handwritten materials by Terayama Shuji—including his “Concept for the Language Instruments Exhibition.”