People often ask me what this installation actually is — so here’s the story.
It started in Japan as a fragment of an idea. The seed was the apothecary — bottles as vessels, not of remedies but of memory. Not to cure, but to hold. Each fragment a container. Each sound a trace.
I began experimenting with a Playtronica board, planning to connect it to old letters and digitized voices from home videos. But it quickly turned into something else. I built by instinct — wiring, re-wiring, running out for supplies, making mistakes, learning as I went. And it kind of worked.
But looking back, that version only made sense to me. The connection to the songs wasn’t there yet. And in the end, I had to take it apart so it could fit in my suitcase.
Back in Vancouver, that dismantling turned out to be the best thing. I rebuilt it as BETA 1: Arduinos, custom laser-cut boxes, and apothecary bottles filled with scraps of letters and memorabilia. Now, when you lift a bottle, a light comes on and a voice is released. Eight bottles — each one a vessel of memory.
And here’s the part that matters: it’s not just an installation beside the music anymore. It’s integrated with the five songs I composed for Wildroot & Amber. When I play, people can look, touch, and trigger samples. Those voices and fragments fold directly into the live songs — weaving memory into the performance itself.
It’s still evolving. The more I play, the better it becomes — not because it’s finished, but because it keeps teaching me how memory wants to be held.