Ryoji Ikeda
Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.
Alongside of pure musical activity, Ikeda has been working on long-term projects such as test pattern (2008-) For this project he developed a system that converts any type of data - text, sounds, photos and movies into barcode patterns and binary patterns of 0s and 1s, examining the threshold of human perception.
His albums +/- (1996), 0°C(1998), matrix (2000), dataplex (2005) and test pattern (2008) - pioneered a new minimal world of electronic music through his razor-sharp technique and aesthetics. His sound installation matrix won the Golden Nica Award at Ars Electronica in 2001. The series spectra (2001-) is large-scale installations employing intense white light as a sculptural material and so transforming public locations in Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona and Nagoya where versions have been installed. With Carsten Nicolai, Ikeda works a collaborative project cyclo. (2000- ), which examines error structures and repetitive loops in software and computer programmed music, with audiovisual modules for real-time sound visualization, through live performance, CDs and books (Raster-noton, 2001, 2011).
He performed and exhibited worldwide including MIT, Boston; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Sónar Festival, Barcelona; Tate Modern, London; Art Beijing; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Crossing the Line Festival, New York; Ars Electronica Center, Linz; Barbican Center, London; Museo de Arte, Bogota; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Festival d’Automne, Paris, as well as other electronic music festivals and small DJ clubs.