Karakuri – Poupée mécanique

(Mechanical Doll)

Though I’d progressed quite far with my sketches for Karakuri, I hadn’t found a convincing raison d’être for the sounds and motions that I’d discovered quite intuitively while experimenting with my own voice and arm. The pieces lacked a story, a connecting thread. Then I accidentally stumbled on a 13-second video about karakuri, a mechanised puppet from nineteenth-century Japan. The video greatly inspired the further act of composition as I explored the possible relations between the voice of a singer and her arm.

 

1. Flèche (Arrow)

Hisashige Tanaka, the inventor of the mechanical karakuri puppets, stands in front of a mirror and investigates the possible movements of a puppet representing a young archer.

 

2. Segments

The young archer plays his number in thirteen seconds. Tanaka declaims a detailed list of movements that the puppet must perform while shooting the arrow.

 

3. Pièces détachées (Separate Parts)

Tanaka, highly concentrated, attentively appraises each part of the mechanism.

 

4. Automate (Automaton)

The mechanical puppet works! It walks around, causing

disasters...

Ondřej Adámek