Gig Review: Kagami | Ryuichi Sakamoto + Tin Drum

I have to keep reminding myself we live in the future, not the present, because what we believe is the present has already passed.

Before the acclaimed Japanese composer’s passing in early 2023, he gave a concert performance which was motion captured by cutting edge mixed reality studio Tin Drum. The end result was Kagami (Mirror), an AR experience which can continue to perform his works indefinitely, carrying Sakamoto’s music, or “empathy” (as he puts it), through the centuries, which was his dying wish. Two years in, the exhibition has travelled the world and landed across the ditch in Melbourne, where it has been running for the past month. I was worried it wasn’t popular as I was the sole wanderer in the backrooms that is the Melbourne Convention Centre. 

However, a few minutes before the performance started, the other NPCs loaded in, revealing that nearly every session has been sold out.

And for good measure. Kagami is like nothing else.

A technological wonder, where a burger-sized computer, hanging like a medallion around your neck, renders the Professor as a hologram before your eyes, with stunning life-like realism. The performance left me wondering if Kagami could be taken home. A VR release might make the show more accessible to more people. But there was something shared and communal that elevated the experience, sitting on the floor at Sakamoto’s side, next to strangers as equally transfixed by his music as I was. Truely a ghost in the machine, Kagami succeeds in carrying the deep emotion, the empathy, of his sound into the future, while simultaneously honouring the artist’s monumental legacy on electronic music.