GreatPerson.tune vol.01

GreatPerson.tune is a new audio portrait series that reconstructs historical and cultural figures as "Unauthorized Sound Portraits".

Created by SPONGE BAM BAM, a creative sampling collective led by Ko Ando, the project turns away from visual representation and uses sound to draw an unseen silhouette of a person.

Not a biography.
Not an image.
Not a documentary.
A portrait built only from sound.

About the Series - vol.01

The first volume presents three 60-second portraits:

Kenji Miyazawa / Juzaburo Tsutaya / Nikola Tesla

Each belongs to a different era and field, yet together they trace a loose arc:

Nature, City, Future
Prayer, Enterprise, Illumination

Behind every track is SPONGE BAM BAM's original method,
Shōchō-on® (Symbolic Sound) - a two-layered framework that decomposes a person into:

Functional Value × Functional Sound = what the person did
Emotional Value × Emotional Sound = how the person lived

Field recordings and synthetic tones are chosen for these two axes, then edited and mixed to reconstruct something intangible: the presence, atmosphere and emotional weight of an individual.

1 | KenjiMiyazawa.tune
A sonic poetics of snow, soil and the galaxy.

Miyazawa's life - farming, teaching, writing, walking through nature, imagining the cosmos - is decomposed and rebuilt as sound.

Footsteps in snow, pen clicks, paper rustling, hoes, stones, processed insects, distant thunder, winter wind and river flow shift through four phases: Observation, Immersion, Deviation, Disassembly.

Everyday sounds gradually collapse into something mythic. After everything falls silent, a single pen click appears - a small spark of creation, like an afterimage of Miyazawa's inner universe.

2 | JuzaburoTsutaya.tune
The bustling rhythm of Edo's culture and conspiracy.

Publisher, distributor, cultural instigator and supporter of Ukiyo-e artists, Tsutaya's urban energy is reimagined as a pulsing, chaotic beat.

Woodblock printing, paper cutting, shamisen, street noise, laughter, flints, festival drums and courier footsteps move through Chic, Bustle, Provocation, Transformation.

The heat of the printshop, the elegance of the pleasure quarters, art and rebellion and the chaos of the city merge into rising noise. In the end, a single dry woodblock tap remains - the end of the feast and the seed of a new culture.

3 | NikolaTesla.tune
A luminous fantasia where science fractures into myth.

Precision experiments, solitude, eccentric brilliance and visions of the future are rendered in electrical textures and laboratory noise.

Metal microsounds, high-voltage discharges, typewriter keys, audience murmurs, night wind, metal resonance, power-cut clicks and electronic noise trace Experiment, Tension, Chaos, Afterimage.

Rhythms dissolve into noise, leaving only a futuristic echo. After a moment of darkness, a sharp electric snap appears - a solitary flash, like the residue of Tesla's genius.

About Shōchō-on®

Shōchō-on® is SPONGE BAM BAM's method for designing "auditory identity". By analysing both functional and emotional value, and recomposing the sounds that resonate with them, it aims to portray what words and images cannot.

GreatPerson.tune applies this to historical and cultural figures, proposing a new style of sound-based portraiture and a quiet new way to hear someone's presence.