How a "Video Performer" Came into Harmony with 300 Years of Orchestral Tradition

No.10( Commission )

#Creative Direction

2026

How a "Video Performer" Came into Harmony with 300 Years of Orchestral Tradition

Yoichi Ochiai x Japan Philharmonic Orchestra Project <Part1>

Some 300 years have passed since the orchestra was born. Even as photography, film and other media have continued to evolve, the basic form of the orchestra, made up of a conductor and instrumentalists, has never changed. The Yoichi Ochiai x Japan Philharmonic Orchestra Project is an exploration of a new vision of the orchestra. It creatively breaks away from the conventional structures of “music leads, visuals follow,” and “music is fitted to visuals.” WOW joined the project as a “Video Performer.” For eight years, from 2018 to 2025, WOW continued to explore uncharted territory. The goal was to transform the orchestra through technology and to deliver a novel experience felt not only with the ears and eyes, but with the entire body.

How a "Video Performer" Came into Harmony with 300 Years of Orchestral Tradition

Mission: To reexamine the form of orchestral performance, which has remained unchanged for 300 years, and to use technology to update the concert experience. To make visuals function not as a mere backdrop, but as part of the orchestra itself.
Approach: WOW took part in the project as a “Video Performer” and pioneered new methods of expression each year. These ranged from understanding the music, to intervening in the space through hardware, to synchronizing with live performance, and finally to exploring autonomous expression through generative AI. Treating the work as a cultural project in which tradition and technology converge, WOW spent eight years continually taking on the challenge of creating new concert experiences.

Beyond Client and Contractor: A Commitment to a “Cultural Project”

Chapter.1

This ambitious project did not begin as the kind of typical client work that comes with a clearly defined set of requirements. It began with Junko Yamagishi, who was then in charge of public relations, program planning and production at the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra (hereafter JPO). Driven by a strong sense of urgency about the future of the orchestra, she approached media artist Yoichi Ochiai and asked him to “update the orchestra itself.” Ochiai already had a firm vision in mind: “If Mozart were alive today, he would surely have written a part for ‘video’ into his scores.” How to bring such an abstract and grand idea to life, however, remained uncertain. It was WOW that Ochiai chose for the task.

“When we started, none of us really knew what kind of framework the project had or what the big picture was,” recalls Creative Director Kosuke Oho. “There is no other opportunity to do something this experimental with the musicians of a top-tier orchestra, in Japan’s finest classical music halls such as Suntory Hall and Tokyo Opera City. We decided that, even if it meant going beyond a profit-driven business framework, we should take it on as ‘WOW’s cultural project,’ one in which we would pursue our own expression to its limits.” And so, beyond the usual boundaries between client and contractor, the curtain rose on a “lavish laboratory for technology and expression,” shared by the creators themselves.

A Long Period of Learning and Interpretation, as Long as Production Itself

Chapter.2

In this project, an enormous amount of time was devoted to the process of research and immersion before any ideas were proposed or design work began. “I’m embarrassed to admit it, but at first I didn’t even know how to read an orchestral score,” says Director Tatsuki Kondo. Together with Ochiai and conductor Hikaru Ebihara, the WOW team spread printed scores across the table and wrote annotations on them, such as “This part depicts this kind of scene” and “What philosophy or interpretation led the composer to place this note here?” Session after session, they unraveled the interpretation of each piece, one by one. The team delved deep into the history of the orchestra and of music, working to understand the intentions behind each movement of the conductor’s baton. This process of input and dialogue took as long as the actual design and production. Without it, WOW could never have stepped into the orchestra as a “Video Performer” and taken the stage.

In Dialogue with a 300-Year-Old “Sanctuary”: How Visuals Merged with the Space

Chapter.3

Stepping into the format of the orchestra as a “Video Performer” proved extraordinarily difficult, far more so than anyone had imagined. For there existed a sanctuary—comprising the “resonance of live acoustic sound” and the “concentration of the musicians,” both cultivated over 300 years of history—that must never be disturbed. Because the concert hall itself functions as one enormous instrument, even adding physical equipment such as sensors or projectors risked changing its acoustics. Just placing a motion-capture camera to track the conductor’s movements led to a millimeter-by-millimeter tug-of-war on site, with concerns such as “If it goes here, it will be in the musicians’ line of sight and serve as a distraction.” The orchestral space is so delicate that every detail—from projector exhaust noise and the clicks of video operation to the heat given off by equipment and the brightness of the lighting—raised questions about how it might impact the performance.

WOW therefore went beyond simply installing conventional rectangular monitors. The team divided video displays into narrow vertical strips arranged to blend into the space (“Sound of Digital Fermentation,” 2021). It also suspended two massive displays (3.5 m × 3.5 m) above the stage so that images rained down from overhead (“Recursive Orchestra,” 2023). Through such efforts, WOW took a sincere and consistent approach to reconfiguring its equipment and specifications, including the form and placement of hardware, to fit the context of the orchestra.

With each concert, this attitude and the quality of the work led to greater understanding among the JPO musicians, and WOW gradually came to earn their genuine cooperation. For a visual design studio whose strength lies in video to take part in renewing orchestral culture, building such relationships was essential.

A World Without a Click Track: The Tension of Syncing with “Living Music”

Chapter.4

In terms of visual expression, WOW’s greatest challenge was working in real time. In live productions for pop music and similar genres, visuals are usually synchronized to a preset tempo, known as a click track. Classical music, however, has no such thing. “The tempo changes every time, depending on how the conductor feels that day, the atmosphere in the hall and the character of the piece. Even the rehearsal and the concert can completely differ. In other words, simply playing back pre-made video will never achieve true synchronization with the music,” says Oho.

During each concert, Kondo and the other WOW members acted as true “Video Performers.” They manually controlled the timing and speed of video playback while keeping their attention on the conductor’s baton and the breathing of the orchestra. “It’s a live, one-shot performance with no room for failure. Even after eight years, my hands would shake with nerves during the concert. That’s exactly why the energy born in the moment when live music and visuals come together perfectly was an experience like no other,” says Kondo. (Continued in Part 2)

Credit

Organizer : Japan Philharmonic Orchestra Director : Yoichi Ochiai Conductor : Hikaru Ebihara, Junichi Hirokami Light : Kazuhiro Naruse Creative Director : Kosuke Oho Director : Tatsuki Kondo Planner : Shigetaka Makabe Technical Director : Shunsaku Ishinabe, Sunataro Hosoi, Yuta Nakano, Keita Abe, Kensuke Arakawa Programmer : Yuta Nakano, Keita Abe, Seiya Takasawa, Sunataro Hosoi, Shunsaku Ishinabe, Takeshi Funatsu, Takuto Nanba, Ryonosuke Ono Visual Designer : Hironobu Sone, Takafumi Matsunaga, Tomoko Ishii, Moe Goto, Reiko Katayama, Shota Oga, Rin Matsunaga, Misaki Horai Designer : Haruka Kanno PR : Michiru Sasaki, Shione Hamada Project Manager : Ken Ishii Assistant Producer : Ryoma Yamashita, Taiki Koizumi Producer : Go Hagiwara Camera Crew : Imura Office Photographer : Atsushi Yamaguchi, Taira Tairadate, Tomoko Hidaki Equipment Cooperation : Prism, Astro Design, TELMIC Cooperation : jiseCHI, inc., raw, TBWA\HAKUHODO, Suntory Hall, Pixie Dust Technologies, Inc., FUJITSU LIMITED, GROOVE X Co., Ltd., Pioneer Corporation, Asahi Shuzo Co., Ltd., Emohouse, Seibido Co., Ltd., Tokamachi City Museum, Ritsumeikan University Shizuka Shirakawa Institute of Oriental Letters and Culture, Haruka International Co., Ltd., yuki tsuji, and others. Grant : Reiwa 3rd year “Japan Expo” Innovation Project, Agency for Cultural , Affairs/Japan Arts Council, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture Arts Council Tokyo