――While it may be difficult to visit exhibitions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I think that in line with this social situation there must be a demand for apps that allow people to enjoy guides to exhibition artworks at home. Why was “Listening Art” created?

Hoshino  The idea of the app “Listening Art” itself actually dates back to before the COVID-19 pandemic. We released this service in December 2019 in the hope that people would use it to enjoy art while listening to an audio guide at home or on the train. We have produced apps for audio guides in the past, but this was our first attempt to create one that makes it possible for people to listen to a variety of audio guides within a single app.
The first audio guide app we released was “Ohanashi Van Gogh” (a story of Van Gogh), which is still available. This original content from Acoustiguide features voice actor Daisuke Ono as Vincent van Gogh, and allows users to enjoy Van Gogh’s own account of his tumultuous life in the form of a picture book.

Uemura  The impetus for starting with “Ohanashi Van Gogh” came from the great response to the audio guide for the “Van Gogh and Gauguin” exhibition held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in 2016. Around the same time “Listening Art” was released, the “Van Gogh exhibition” was held first at the Ueno Royal Museum and after that at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, and we created an audio guide for that exhibition, narrated by voice actor Kensho Ono, from the perspective of Van Gogh’s younger brother, Theo. We produced this original content based on our understanding that would be compatible with the audio guide that visitors would hear at the exhibition venues.

――Have you had any feedback since its release?

Hoshino   Even people who have never experienced renting an audio guide can easily download one onto their own smartphone and enjoy it any time they like through their own earphones, a feature that has been very well received. For exhibitions where there were a lot of historical terms and unfamiliar words, such as the “Prince Shotoku and Horyuji Temple” exhibition that was held at the Nara National Museum and the Tokyo National Museum in 2021, many visitors came to the venue after having first prepared for the exhibition with “Listening Art,” and after returning home they enjoyed listening to the app again while perusing the exhibition catalog. Visitors enjoyed the exhibition in a variety of ways, including through preparation and review. For scientific exhibitions such as “Mummies of Ancient Egypt: Rediscovering Six Lives” from the British Museum (traveled to the National Museum of Nature and Science and Kobe City Museum) opened from the autumn of 2021, some people listened to the guide repeatedly with their children after returning home. We often learn about various ways of enjoying the app from our customers, and this provides us with hints for future content creation, such as how to make guides that are more enjoyable for children!

――What were your innovations in developing the app?

Hoshino  Our first priority when developing “Listening Art” was to keep the functions simple so as not to interfere with the art appreciation experience. Operation is intuitive and easy to understand, and we have made the system easier for more people stress-free by improving details such as the size of buttons.

――While “Listening Art” content is basically released in conjunction with exhibitions, the audio guide for the “Van Gogh and Gauguin” exhibition held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in 2016 was archived and distributed from November 2021. Why was this content re-released?

Takahashi  The audio guide for the “Van Gogh and Gauguin” exhibition was so well received at the time that some visitors referred to it as “a legendary audio guide.” And even five years later, we were still receiving comments on social networking sites saying, “The audio guide to the Van Gogh and Gauguin (exhibition) at that time was great,” and I was talking with our staff about how great it would be if everyone had the opportunity to listen to it again. So we were pleased to announce that the archive was again made available to the public in commemoration of the opening of the exhibition “Collecting Van Gogh: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Passion for Vincent’s Art.”

――Why was it called a “legendary voice guide”?

Uemura   The first reason is that the “Van Gogh and Gauguin” exhibition itself was wonderful. The works of art, the exhibition, and the audio guide were all parts of the same process. The exhibition focused on Van Gogh and Gauguin and how their relationship to each other impacted their works and their lives, which was an unprecedented approach that attracted a great deal of attention. The audio guide was also created in the style of a drama with the two artists as the protagonists. In recent years, it has become quite common to use voice actors or actors with assigned roles to play parts in story-based guides, but at the time, this was an unusual experiment.

――How did the idea come about?

Uemura   The exhibition also focused on the personalities of the two artists, so after thinking about what we could do with the audio guide, we planned to have the roles of Van Gogh and Gauguin played by separate voice actors. Van Gogh and Gauguin were like two brothers. Each was other’s teacher, student, friend, and rival, and they influenced each other strongly. We wanted to use people who could appreciate this connection, and so we consulted with the (exhibition) organizers and asked Daisuke Ono and Tomokazu Sugita, two voice actors who have often worked together. The script is based on letters written by Van Gogh and Gauguin at the time, but we chose words that sounded pleasant to our ears from all kinds of literary sources, ranging from the original texts to various translations.

――Please tell us what you considered important when you were recording the audio guide, and about any memorable episodes involving Mr. Ono and Mr. Sugita.

Uemura  More than a century separates the era in which Van Gogh and Gauguin lived and our own era when visitors to the exhibition are viewing their paintings, and in putting together this audio guide, we were thought hard about how we could best bridge that interval through sound. We would be very happy if visitors could perceive in three dimensions that real individuals once painted those pictures with their own hands.
We recorded the audio guide while consulting with Mr. Ono and Mr. Sugita. For example, in the parting scene between the two artists, there is a line in which Gaugin says to Van Gogh: “A hearty handshake. Yours, Vincent” I told Mr. Ono during the recording that I wanted him to be conscious of the comma (“,”) following “Yours” as he read the line. The depth of the words is completely different when the pause marked by the comma is added. In the case of Gauguin, his voice begins rather coldly, as if he is passing Van Gogh in the street. However, for the portion after Van Gogh’s death, when Gauguin speaks alone, we asked Mr. Sugita to change the tone of his voice to make it more warm and mellow.

―― I see you paid careful attention to even the smallest details in creating this audio guide. Mr. Ono’s voice changed my image of Van Gogh a little.

Uemura  Some of the users commented that they had the impression that the roles of Van Gogh and Gauguin were opposites. While some people may have an image of Van Gogh as a “man of fire” or a “passionate man,” he appears to have had a very forthright and innocent attitude toward his creations and the people around him. In this audio guide, Mr. Ono expresses this aspect of Van Gogh well. I also think that visitors to the “Collecting Van Gogh: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Passion for Vincent’s Art” exhibition would have been able to enjoy a different side of Van Gogh.

―― Please tell us about the content you are planning to release in future on “Listening Art.”

Takahashi  We are currently preparing for a special exhibition “Amedeo Modigliani” to be held at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka from April 9, 2022. More titles are also scheduled for release in the near future. Please look forward to them.

Japanese original text: Emi Sato