Art and Song

[ACMItM: Daily Life - Movie Version]

"Wow."

Joule agreed with Saten's sentiment. The venue for Arisa's performance was a large domed building. Joule struggled finding a good comparison.

The entire building was structured like a tent in the shape of a dome. The "Tent posts" were large pillars made of metal coated in various colours of metallic paints while the "canvas" of the tent was created from multiple materials. At a first look, the building looked messy but it was clear that the mess was created with a careful eye.

While Academy City was designed to always put science first, the people who lived here still needed this sort of building. It was a building containing the greatest marvels of art this city had made. It was part museum and part theatre.

It was simply named the Academy City Art Showcase.

The group headed into the entrance of the building and showed their tickets. They were directed to a set of stairs that had a line streaching all the way to the desk itself.

That wouldn't have been good for Kuroko so the woman managing the desk searched for a special pass and gave them directions to an elevator inside the showcase.

As they walked past the many exhibitions they started talking about them. It turned out that Saten and Kuroko had very different impressions of what was and wasn't art.

"It's amazing. Look, each block has it's own painting as well!"

Kuroko sighed and came over. The art piece in question was a set of blocks that all rotated around a column. Each side was coloured differently so from far enough away it looked like a flipbook animation. As You got closer though you could see that each block had it's own artwork too that told a story as it rotated.

"It's too over the top." Kuroko complained "Art should be simple yet detailed, like a painting."

Uiharu looked over at that "Not necessarily, if making this was a creative activity then it was art."

"But it isn't just one work," Kuroko countered "I can accept that each individual image could be artisting but in that case it isn't very special. The whole isn't a single piece of art."

Joule disagreed "What about a puzzle? That's made of many small pieces but the finished puzzle can be a piece of art."

Kuroko shook her head again "Each piece of a puzzle isn't meant to be a piece of art on it's own."

Misaka was reading the descriptive plaque as Saten responded "Oh? So just because he worked on these smaller images as well, you don't think the full slideshow is art?"

"She, actually." Misaka commented as she continued to read. Saten nodded and corrected herself "She."

Kuroko looked annoyed "I'm not an art critic, why are we getting stuck on this? What is it called anyway?"

Misaka read out from where she stood "It's 'A person's life', it's meant to be showing a person going through their life and how they are connected to everyone else and what they are doing."

At that, Kuroko looked thoughtful "I do see what it's going for, in a way." She shrugged "I can't think of an easy way of showing that in a painting."

"Huh." Saten didn't seem to know how to respond to that so after a moment they all headed on again.

They weren't wasting time, there was still about half an hour until Arisa's show began.

A few more times along the way, they stopped to look at various pieces of art but it only took them about fifteen minutes to reach the lift. There was a security guard there but they showed him their pass and were allowed up.

The lift actually took them to an area that was currently unused but near the backstage area. They debated peaking there heads in to see if they could give Arisa some last minute encouragement but decided against it and just headed out to the performance hall. There was no dedicated seating in here, it was just a max reasonable capacity like an outdoor stage.

The group chatted until the lights dimmed. That made Saten panic quickly "Does anyone have any glowsticks?"

Joule checked her bag as did Uiharu. Between the two of them, each of them was able to get a pair of glowsticks.

[ACMI2: See visionS (OP2)] (Or chose another song, Youtube doesn't have most of Arisa's songs after all)

The screen at the back of the room lit up as Arisa got out onto the stage with a spin.

Her songs began and the mood in the room shot up. As glowsticks got waved in time with the song, Joule noticed that Saten had cracked both of her sticks and was waving them around together with a bright smile on her face.

As Arisa danced on stage, Joule could see how much fun she was having. It really was her calling.

Lumen agreed with Joule but gave off the feeling that something was distracting her.

Probably best to ask about it later, Joule decided.

Arisa went on for a collection of songs before taking a break for a bit. People went for refreshments as did the group of friends.

End of chapter.

The movie never actually says were this performance takes place so I invented the Academy City Art Showcase.

This gave a chance for the character to discuss art. I thought up the art piece myself as I just thought it would be a cool thing to see. If it does exist already, cool?