Outside the Lee Ufan Museum, Naoshima. Photo: Getty Images
An unlikely art trail in a remote corner of Japan has Danielle Demetriou captivated.
I am standing in a dark, windowless room resonating with the sound of a human heartbeat, each pulsating thump accompanied by a strobe-like flicker of light.
This is not because I am in the bowels of an underground nightclub in Tokyo. Nor am I detained in a mental institute (despite the presence of a woman in a clinical white outfit just the other side of the door).
Giant pumpkin at Shikoku Island. Photo: AFP
My location is a wooden building on a forest-fringed beach on a tiny fishing island in Japan - and I am inside a modern art installation.
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The appreciation of contemporary art usually takes place in a gallery. But things are done differently in Japan - in particular, in the Seto Inland Sea area. Scattered with 3000-plus islands, this idyllic expanse of blue water is dubbed the Mediterranean of Japan on account of its temperate climate and olive trees.
It is in this region, about 640 kilometres south of Tokyo, that hundreds of artworks - the heartbeat house included - have been installed across rice fields, beaches, shrines and old houses as part of an unusual project to revitalise ageing communities.
Benesse House Art. Photo: Inside Japan Tours
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