1. Go to a space where you can be alone.
2. Close the door, put on headphones or another audio device, and create an atmosphere where you can listen to the sound quietly.
3. Can you hear your own breathing and your pulse?
4. When you are ready, please press the play button and listen closely.
Host
YUMEGIWA
Organizer
YUMEGIWA x the ghost project
Artist
NAKAZATO Ryuzo
SING
HYUMA
Support
TINA AUDIO
Visual Design
©︎the ghost project, CHO Minjeong
DRACRE Ambient Dream is a sound work presented as part of “SHIBUYA SLOW STREAM: A Sound System to Awaken the River Guardian of Shibuya,” a project developed by YUMEGIWA between 2024 and 2025.
The music, created through a collaboration between Nakazato Ryuzo, SING, and HYUMA, was conceived as a means of communication with imagined beings, including the nushi—the guardian spirit of the river.
[* “nushi (ヌシ)” refers to a sacred being that has stayed in one place for many years, growing to an enormous size over time.]
We understood the nushi as “a metaphor for an unnameable sensation that emerges in the relationship between humans and nature,” and sought traces of this presence drifting within the imaginations of people living in the city. (As part of this research, we invited several hundred people living in urban environments, starting from the Shibuya River, to share episodes related to imaginary creatures.)
Through the concluding ritual of the project, “The Ceremony to Awaken the River Guardian of Shibuya,” we came to realize that perhaps there once was a nushi in the Shibuya River—but now, there is none. This absence reflects how urban life has weakened our sense of connection with nature, diminishing our ability to imagine or feel the presence of such beings. The project ultimately led us to confront the stark reality of a city whose vitality has grown thin.
But has the nushi of the Shibuya River truly disappeared? It may have simply changed its form, continuing to exist somewhere beyond our perception.
From here on, we will continue to listen closely to the unheard voices of invisible presences: those that have dissipated within the city, those buried alive, the hopeful sensations and intimations once imagined through our relationship with nature, and the imaginary beings people wished could remain close at hand.
…Perhaps this online space is a shelter for the nushi who have lost their place to go—along with our own imagination.
This sound piece is the online edition of the “Sound System to Awaken the Nushi* of the Shibuya River: DRACRE Ambient Dream,” presented by Team YUMEGIWA at “SHIBUYA SLOW STREAM,” taking place in Shibuya, Tokyo, from March 29 to 30, 2025. This page is designed to showcase how the act of listening can be expanded and reconfigured where physical and digital spaces intersect. This collaboration is part of the 2025 the ghost project’s sound art project “Kikoku Shushu (鬼哭啾啾).”
← About : kikoku shushu