The Japanese sound artist Tomoko Sauvage has spent the last two decades realizing the possibilities of sound through an elemental material: water. Based in Paris, her multidisciplinary practice merges performance, sculpture, installation, and experimental music, centering on her self-developed Waterbowls—porcelain bowls filled with water and activated through touch, movement, and amplified with underwater microphones. The result is an immersive sonic landscape where droplets, vibrations, acoustic feedback, and architectural space become active collaborators. Her work has been presented internationally at leading museums, festivals, and cultural institutions, and she has collaborated with artists, composers, and experimental musicians across disciplines, earning recognition for compositions that blur the boundaries between the natural and the technological.
Photo by Eike Walkenhorst, courtesy of Tomoko Sauvage.
With upcoming presentations at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum and Vancouver’s Gibson Art Museum, Sauvage continues to expand her investigation of sound as a living, ever-changing medium. With Whitewall, she reflects on the origins of her Waterbowls instrument, the delicate balance between control and chance, the influence of migration and cultural exchange on her practice, and why listening—to water, architecture, and one another—remains at the heart of everything she creates.
Discovering Water as an Instrument
Photo by Stephen Harvey, courtesy of Tomoko Sauvage.
WHITEWALL: Your work blurs the boundary between sound, sculpture, and performance. When did you first realize that water, and space, could be an instrument, not just a medium?
TOMOKO SAUVAGE: Everything started in a simple experiment with porcelain bowls and water when I was inspired by a traditional South Indian percussion instrument, jalatharangam, made of a set of porcelain bowls filled with water. I was particularly impressed by its ornamental sound created with moving water and wanted to focus on it. The space came much later, after I combined this rather primitive instrument with underwater microphones. The sensitive microphones capture and amplify subtle signals. In this process, the room acoustics become decisive as they amplify or absorb the sound. They can also alter the sounds and thus become an instrument.
WW: In Waterbowls, the role of chance—water’s drops, waves, bubbles, and acoustic feedback—plays as much a role as intention. How do you balance control and unpredictability in performance? What does that tension teach you and the audience about listening?
TS: As a performer of this instrument, I’ve gained, over years, a certain sense of balance like a tightrope walker. This goes with a calmness and patience for me to wait for a magical moment to arrive. It’s a moment where everything seems to be under control without me doing anything. Everything in the room is in harmony—the audience’s energy, the circulation of sound, air, and water—as if time were suspended. This happens especially when I play audio feedback, a physical phenomenon of loops of sound created between microphones and loudspeakers. I feel the loop of electric signals that go through water, air, bowls, and my hands, which are all vibrating in a constant state, and it seems to go along with the energy of the room, people’s attention, and their vibrating bodies. It’s a special feeling.
A Practice Shaped by Cultural Exchange
Photo by Leo Lopez, courtesy of Tomoko Sauvage.
WW: You’ve lived in Paris for decades, but your work draws from a multiplicity of cultures—from jazz to Hindustani improvisation to aquatic sound worlds. How do your Japanese roots and your life in Europe inform the poetic logic of your sound experiments?
TS: I’m interested in the moving or migrating nature of objects, sounds, music, and ideas. A master of jalatharangam once told me that his bowls are made in China or Japan, as India doesn’t produce porcelain historically. Indian music has always thrived by incorporating foreign instruments like the violin and harmonium. My bowls are made in Limoges, a French city well known for white porcelain. My practice has developed in Europe, often in spaces with particular acoustic characteristics like churches and water reservoirs, thanks to many music festival organizers. I use water dripping in my music, and it has something similar to Suikinkutsu, a traditional Japanese sound device for listening to water drops in tea gardens, though I wasn’t aware of it when I started. The world is constantly becoming creolized, and my research is part of it.
Experiencing Sound Across Different Formats
Photo by Eike Walkenhorst, courtesy of Tomoko Sauvage.
Photo by Eike Walkenhorst, courtesy of Tomoko Sauvage.
WW: Your practice extends across solo performances, collaborative installations, albums, videos, and more. How does your relationship to the audience shift in a live concert versus an exhibition or recorded context?
TS: Records, including digital releases, can travel very far—to places where I cannot travel, like people’s bedrooms on the opposite side of the globe. They can create a very intimate experience. There are also record shop owners and distributors who work passionately to share our music across the world. There’s a feeling of community, and it’s a main difference from the visual art world. At exhibitions, people can come and go freely, and different temporalities can be created. Major museums can reach people from different backgrounds. Live performances are special because artists can share space and energy collectively for 40 minutes or more and receive direct responses. I’ve been constantly nourished by this.
WW: In February at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, you presented a new iteration of your video work, Barrissando. Tell us about this.
TS: Barrissando is a video piece I created at home during the COVID period. I made up the word from the French verb barrir, which expresses the voice of an elephant. I rub the surface of a wet mirror with my finger to make a noise that sounds like an elephant roaring. My sound practice is often about mimicking natural sounds—wind, storms, and animal voices. Humans have communicated with animals using bird whistles and other sounding tools throughout history, and silent films also relied on handmade sound effects. For this new iteration, I emphasized the acousmatic nature of my practice by placing the video inside a mirror box so visitors encounter the sound before they identify its source.
Looking Ahead to Vancouver
Photo by Johannes Berger, courtesy of Tomoko Sauvage.
WW: Next year in Vancouver, you’ll also present at the Gibson Art Museum. What can we expect?
TS: The ideas for this exhibition are still evolving, but I will certainly present a new iteration of Buloklok. It is a set of glass sculptures that emit air bubbles in water. The sounds of the bubbles are amplified, and I imagined them as a collection of breathing patterns from different aquatic creatures. The exhibition’s overall theme is bells and time. I’ve been thinking about uncommon forms of bells, especially underwater ones, and how bubbles are distant cousins of bells.
Letting Space Shape the Music
WW: Given how sensitive your instruments are—affected by humidity, temperature, room acoustics, and even evaporation—how much does context shape what you make? How do you adapt to these uncontrollable variables?
TS: Someone once described my role as a performer of Waterbowls as a gardener. I carefully prepare the environment for my instrument—the positions of objects and sound systems, the fine-tuning of water levels, and more. Once the performance begins, I’m obliged to adjust the music to what’s possible in that prepared space. Sometimes it doesn’t work well. I’ve always been learning about different spaces and the characteristics of sound systems. When I perform in highly reverberant spaces, the instrument completely changes its nature. Sounds that normally remain inaudible suddenly emerge. Hidden frequencies and hidden vibrations become audible, and it’s a special experience.
WW: What do you like to listen to when you’re not creating?
TS: I listen to old-school jazz, soul, hip-hop, Brazilian MPB, and Jamaican dancehall from around 2000. I love dancing, too. I also love listening to traditional music like gamelan, Khaen music from Lao people, Mandingo music, and Carnatic music. I sometimes play Bach’s Partita on the piano to reactivate my brain.
