Welcome to a world of wonderful combinations—who knew you could make so many amazing sounds by just covering holes with this and that?

If you’re looking for some original fun, a hole and a covering is all you need!
The new “Trial Residency” program, which began in May 2016, brings experimenters in “sound” and “music” to Topping East for limited-period residencies that enable participants to try new things and develop their creations. The first two artists in residence were Ayako Isobe and Yasuo Mizutake, who held a workshop that used waste material from the Hokusai Music Expo (February 2016) to create instruments from scratch. As Isobe and Mizutake experimented with different waste material designs over the course of the Trial Residence period, they eventually rediscovered the true, unadulterated “origins of sound”—the purest essence of musical instruments, without all the trappings of form and style.
Aiming to provide participants with a chance to uncover the possibilities of creating forms of play out of those new sounds, the Sound-Hole Laboratory brings kids and adults together for a fun, exploratory experience. What sounds do you get when you use different materials to cover holes of all shapes and sizes? What kinds of sounds can the things lying around your house make? Sign up and find out how you can turn everyday items into musical instruments!