Toward the end of his life, Ryuichi Sakamoto spoke of wanting to make “music freed from the constraints of time.” As the musician told the Asahi Shimbun in 2019, “I guess it is similar to how I long for ‘eternity.’”

It was natural for him to look beyond the limitations of audio recordings or live performances, a search that led him to the gallery. From the mid-2000s onward, Sakamoto created a number of installation works, often in collaboration with Shiro Takatani, of multimedia art collective Dumb Type. In a museum setting, Sakamoto was able to expand on existing works or explore his varied philosophical, scientific and aesthetic interests. There, the music could keep playing — if not for eternity, then at least for the duration of the venue’s opening hours.

Rather than do a conventional tour for his 2017 album, “async,” Sakamoto presented it as an exhibition at Tokyo’s Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, where it was complemented by video pieces from Takatani, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the artist duo Zakkubalan. Visitors could listen to the album in surround sound while watching images generated by Takatani in real-time, an example of what Sakamoto called “installation music.” As he explained in an interview with Bijutsu Techo magazine: “I want people to immerse themselves in the sounds in an environment that is the same as the one I had while listening and creating.”