Tentacles Fever

Tentacles Fever is a kinetic and animation-oriented work that explores a state in which the correspondence between sound and physical motion is continuously maintained, while the perception of that correspondence is placed in suspension. The work centers on a sound-responsive structure in which tentacle-like soft actuators react to music, producing movements that evoke the impression of living entities dancing. At the same time, the work is not primarily concerned with explicitly visualizing the correspondence between sound and motion, but with examining the conditions under which that correspondence slips out of perceptual grasp.

The system directly converts sound into physical movement; however, it is not designed to present a clear one-to-one mapping between individual sounds and individual motions to the audience. Multiple precise synchronizations are constructed to coexist simultaneously, and as a system, synchronization between sound and motion is always preserved. Control does not collapse over time, nor does the behavior drift randomly. Musical structure is consistently and faithfully reflected in motion throughout the operation of the work.

In the exhibition, the work is designed to arrange a large number of tentacle-like actuators in a layered configuration with varying heights, thereby presenting a condition in which multiple temporal responses coexist at once. As a result, audiences find it difficult to track in detail which movements correspond to which sounds. While the accuracy of synchronization remains perceptible, the correspondence itself does not become fixed within perception. Instead, only the collective movement of the group emerges, perceived as a single behavior that contains internal order. This state is not chaotic; rather, it is experienced as a stable and coherent motion supported by underlying musical structure.

The experience generated in this way sustains a condition in which the correspondence between sound and motion exists, while its perceptual resolution is continuously deferred. This produces a temporal experience that lingers between understanding and sensation. Rather than treating animation as a sequence of pre-designed motions, this work regards animation as a physical process that is continuously generated through the convergence of multiple precise synchronizations, the temporal responses of materials, and the limits of perception—an animation realized through the movement of physical entities. Through the emergence of kinetic drift shaped by sound and temporal inertia, Tentacles Fever seeks to draw the concept of animation away from image-based representation and back into physical space.

International Conferences
Akira Nakayasu. Tentacles Fever: Sound-Responsive SMA Actuators. SIGGRAPH ASIA 2025 Posters, ACM.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3757374.3771479