Ryoji Ikeda
Japan's leading electronic composer/artist, Ryoji Ikeda, focuses on the minutiae of ultrasonics, frequencies and the essential characteristics of sound itself. His work exploits sound's physical property, its causality with human perception and mathematical dianoia as music, time and space. Using computer and digital technology to the utmost limit, Ikeda has been developing particular "microscopic" methods for sound engineering and composition.
Since 1995, Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. His concerts and exhibitions integrate sound, acoustics and sublime imagery. In the artist’s works, music, time and space are shaped by mathematical methods as Ikeda explores sound as sensation, pulling apart its physical properties to reveal its relationship with human perception.
Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. Using computer and digital technologies to the utmost limit, his audiovisual concerts datamatics (2006 present), C4I (2004 - 2007) [commissioned by YCAM] and formula (2000 - 2006) suggest a unique orientation for our future multimedia environment and culture. His acclaimed installations data.tron [prototype] (2007), data.film [nº1-a] (2007),data.spectra (2005), spectra [for terminal 5, jfk] (2004), spectra II (2002) and db (2002) continue to diffuse Ikeda's aesthetic of 'ultra minimalism' to the art world.
Ikeda's latest body of work, datamatics, is a long-term programme of moving image, sculptural, sound and new media works that use data as their theme and material to explore the ways in which abstracted views of reality - data - are used to encode, understand and control the world.
He has been hailed by critics as one of the most radical and innovative contemporary composers for his live performances, sound installations and album releases. His albums +/- (Touch, 1996), 0｡C (Touch, 1998) and matrix (Touch, 2000) pioneered a new minimal world of electronic music, employing sine waves, electronic "glitch" sounds, and white noise. Ikeda released his critically acclaimed, seventh solo album entitled dataplex (raster-noton), as part of the datamatics series, in 2005.
The versatile range of Ikeda's research is demonstrated by his collaborations with Carsten Nicolai on the project cyclo. and with choreographer William Forsythe/Frankfurt Ballett, artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, architect Toyo Ito and artist collective Dumb Type, among others.
The first complete catalogue of Ikeda's seminal work, formula [book + dvd] (Forma) was published in 2005.
Ikeda has exhibited and performed at many of the world's leading festivals and venues including: the Australian
Centre for the Moving Image, 2005 (Melbourne); MIT, 2006 (Massachusetts); Centre Pompidou 2004 and La Villette 2002 (all Paris); Sónar 2006 (Barcelona); Architectural Association 2002, Barbican 2006, Tate Modern Turbine Hall 2006 (all London); Auditorium Parco della Musica 2003 (Rome); ICC 2005, Tokyo International Forum 2006(Tokyo); Göteborg Biennial 2003 (Göteborg); Le Fresnoy 2007 (Tourcoing).
In 2001, Ikeda was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica prize in the digital music category and he was shortlisted for a World Technology Award in 2003.
www.ryojiikeda.com