Shibuya Convergence

Shibuya Convergence is a work for large ensemble, inspired by the scramble crossing outside Shibuya Station in Tokyo. Growing up, I had the chance to visit Tokyo many times and was always fascinated by this famous intersection. Within a few seconds, hundreds of people converge from all directions into an open space, inundating the entire square before quickly dispersing again. The seamless choreography of the whole thing always resembled to me a kind of spontaneous mass performance art.

From an elevated viewpoint, like in the Starbucks directly above the crossing, the spectacle feels more abstract. People appear like tiny atoms or gas particles, weaving around one another, all following individual paths. What felt like chaos on the ground takes on an order and predictability, a singular mass carefully coordinated by the flashing green and red of traffic lights, switching motion on and off like binary code.