Ryo Ikeshiro

Biography

Ryo Ikeshiro is a UK-based Japanese artist whose practice deals with sound, media and computation. He is interested in the artistic potential of computational technology and algorithmic processes as well as the cultural and political dimension of computation and media and its critique within art. His output includes audiovisual performances, interactive installations, generative art, electronic music and various image formats including Teletext pages. Recent works explore issues of race, gender, identity, diversity and net culture through using computer vision, singing voice synthesis software, found footage, onomatopoeia and “sound symbolism”. He has presented his works internationally in a wide range of contexts including exhibitions, festivals, concerts and screenings as well as academic conferences. He is featured in the Electronic Music volume of the Cambridge Introductions to Music series, he is a contributor to Sound Art: Sound as a medium of art, a forthcoming publication from ZKM Karlsruhe, and his articles have been published in the journal Organised Sound. He has a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London. The topic explored was real-time data visualisation and sonification – or live "audiovisualisation" – of emergent generative systems based on dynamical systems and fractals within the framework of audiovisual and computational art. He also works as a lecturer and a curator. Recently, he was an artist in residence at the ACT (Art and Creative Technology) Center at the ACC (Asia Culture Center) in Gwangju, South Korea. He also works as a lecturer at the London South Bank University. www.ryoikeshiro.com

CV Selected Exhibitions/Screenings 25/11/2015–30/6/2016 Plastic Myths, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju 5–13/5/2015 Sound/Place, St. James’s Hatcham Church, London 6/3/2015 GR/JP, Het Nutshujs, the Hague 14/12/2014 Cyberfest Video Art Program, New York 11/2014 DOTMOV Festival, Japan 30/10 – 8/11/2014 International Symposium on Electronic Art, Dubai 6 – 9/10/2014 Seoul International Computer Music Festival 26/8 – 10/10/2014 FILE Electronic Language International Festival, São Paulo 1/5/2014 Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music, SARC, Belfast 1 – 4/4/2014 A-EYE: An exhibition of art and nature-inspired computation, London 21 – 28/2/2013 Papay Gyro Nights, Papa Westray, Orkney 15 – 31/8/2012 Sound Travels Sound Art Festival, NAISA, Toronto 18 – 22/5/2010 re:new Digital Arts Festival, Copenhagen 26/11 – 5/12/2009 The Dissolving Cube, Portman Gallery, London 3 – 4/6/2009 David Tudor’s Rainforest IV, Area10, London Selected Performances 30/10/2015 AR-TOWNS (Non-profit Art Space Network), Bucheon 4 – 12/9/2015 Live Cinema Festival, Piazza dell'Immacolata, Rome 28 – 31/5/2015 Live Performers Meeting, Cinema Aquila, Rome 13 – 17/5/2015 WRO 2015 Test Exposure: 16th Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw 27/3/2015 Agony Art, Chisenhale Art Place, London 17/12/2014 Klub Moozak, Vienna 15/10/2014 In der Kubatur das Kabinetts, Vienna 4/10/2014 White Night 2014, Skopje 21 – 25/5/2014 backup_festival, Weimar 5/5/2014 PureGold Launch, Southbank Centre, London 4 – 18/4/2014 Papay Gyro Nights, Hong Kong 15 – 22/2/2014 Papay Gyro Nights, Papa Westray, Orkney 9/5/2013 PureGold Launch, Southbank Centre, London 6/3/2013 Nonclassical’s Pioneers of Electronic Music, London 2/12/2012 Exploding Cinema, London 9 – 15/9/2012 ICMC, Ljubljana 15 – 18/8/2012 Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 11/5/2012 PureGold Launch, Southbank Centre, London 19 – 29/1/2012 Redsonic, London 29-30/10/2011 Seeing Sound 2, Bath 5/10/2011 CONTEMPORANEA, Festival di Nuova Musica, Udine 1 – 5/6/2010 ICMC, New York 5, 10/2007, 6/2008 ry-om on Resonance FM 7/3/2007 ry-om at Battersea Arts Centre, London 10/2/2007 ry-om at Corsica Studios, London 19/11/2003 Mirrored Seconds, piano quartet, at Cambridge Music Festival 28/2, 1/3/2003 Hommage: Haydn 53, orchestra, performed by the Britten Sinfonia, cond. James

MacMillan, Norwich and Cambridge Residencies 9/2015 – 2/2015 Art and Creative Technology Center, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju 10 – 12/2014 KulturKontakt Austria, Vienna Awards/Grants/Funding 2014 Sound and Music/Francis Chagrin Award 2010, 2012 PRS for Music Foundation/Bliss Trust Composer Bursary 2010 Sound and Music/British Council Travel Bursaries for Composers 2010 – 2013 Goldsmiths Music Dept Research Committee Funding 2008, 2009 University of London Central Research Fund

Competitions 10/7/2015 Visual Music Award, Gelnhausen – honourable mention 19 – 21/3/2015 Videoformes, Digital Arts International Festival, Clermont-Ferrand 19 – 22/12/2013 MADATAC Contemporary New Media Audio-Visual Arts Festival, Madrid 26/9/2013 The Fresh Minds Festival, TAMU, TX – 2nd prize 14 – 16/12/2012 Videomedeja International Video Festival, Novi Sad 11 – 15/12/2012 MADATAC Contemporary New Media Audio-Visual Arts Festival, Madrid Publications 2015 “Sound Art in Japan” (co-author with Atau Tanaka), in Sound Art, ZKM

Karlsruhe/MIT. 2014 “Audification and Non-Standard Synthesis”, Organised Sound 19(1). 2012 “Audiovisual Harmony: the real-time audiovisualisation of a single data source in

Construction in Zhuangzi”, Organised Sound 17(2). Conference Papers 4 – 6/12/2014 “Real-Time GENDYN Audiovisualisation”, Conference on Interdisciplinary

Musicology, Berlin 23 – 24/11/2013 “Live Audiovisualisation of a 3D Mandelbox”, Seeing Sound, Bath 18/6/2013 “Live Audiovisualisation of a 3D Mandelbox”, Real-Time Visuals, London 15 – 18/8/2012 “PulseCubes: an interactive sound installation as interface and new media object”,

Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 23 – 25/5/2012 “GENDYN, Noise and Virtuality: smooth space-time, affect and entropy in the

stochastic synthesis of Xenakis”, Xenakis. La musique électroacoustique, Paris 1 – 3/4/2011 “GENDYN and Merzbow”, Xenakis International Symposium, London 1 – 5/6/2010 “Generative, Emergent, Self-Similar Structures: Construction in Self”, International

Computer Music Conference, New York Releases 11/2014 Optical Research (JEWEL-002), 2-DVD set 9/2014 GIASO - "Great International Audio Streaming Orchestra” (FIBRR013) 6/2013 Composition: White Square, White Circle on s[edition] 12/2009 Outsider Rehearsals with Genosong 6/2008 Album III (cs128) for Creative Sources Recordings with ry-om 2007 Albums – (emp041) and = (emp042) for Earth Monkey Productions with ry-om Education 1/2008 – 8/2013 PhD Studio Composition Goldsmiths, University of London 10/2002 – 8/2003 MPhil Musical Composition Cambridge University 9/1999 – 6/2002 BMus (Hons) Music – 1st Kings College London 9/1997 – 6/1999 A-Levels in Music, Maths, Reading School Further Maths, Physics – A Events Curated 21 – 27/9/2012 SHO-ZYG, London 2/2011 – present A-B-A, London Employment 1/2015 – present Visiting tutor London South Bank University

• Digital Media Art BA Yr2 Critical Code • Collaborative Practices sound and image option Yr2

9/2010 – present Visiting tutor Goldsmiths, University of London • Music and Computing BA/BSc Yr2 core module • Computational Art MFA Creative Technologies & Art Practices

1/2008 – 1/2015 Piano, music tech tutor Morpeth School, London 2007 – 2008 Workshop leading Halal Kebab Hut, algorithmic junkestra 1/2006 – 3/2007 Guitar and keyboard teacher Centre Academy, London 9/2005 – 6/2008 Guitar teacher Hampshire School, London 1/2004 – 12/2007 Piano teacher Ranelagh School, Bracknell

Selected Works Ethnic Diversity in Sites of Cultural Activity (2014-5) Interactive audiovisual installation

Ethnic Diversity in Sites of Cultural Activity poses the question of whether computers can be racist by highlighting the potential for discrimination of face recognition technology. The work locates faces, detects skin colour and alters the sound and image produced depending on the ethnic diversity of the visitors to the exhibition. Different music is selected depending on where the work is exhibited. The piece was originally developed in Vienna where it morphed between Fela Kuti’s Zombie for dark skin and Johann Strauss II’s the Blue Danube performed by the Vienna Philharmonic for light skin in reference to the orchestra’s lack of ethnic and gender diversity. Through a crude racial profiling of visitors, it draws attention to an increasingly common technology which is an example of how a seemingly neutral entity of a computer can reinforce existing power structures. The context of a playful interactive installation is also a reflection of how we rarely focus on how software functions, instead becoming preoccupied with the interface; most software are prepackaged “black boxes” inaccessible due to their propriety and closed nature. In addition, it is not completely infallible as with most software and it may be possible to trick the algorithm e.g. by covering your face, using make-up or changing lighting conditions which the visitors are encouraged to do. Exhibited at the KulturKontakt Austria Artist-in-Residency exhibition, Vienna; Agony Art, Chisenhale Art Place; Sound | Place Sound Art Exhibition, London. Demo recorded in Korea: https://vimeo.com/150753869 (password: actlab)

Construction in Kneading (2013) Immersive generative audiovisual performance and screening work

Construction in Kneading is a live generative audiovisual work. It can be performed live using multiple channels of video and audio, surrounding the audience in sound and moving image. It explores a virtual life form based on the Mandelbox, an n-dimensional fractal inspired by the Mandelbrot set. Its recursion formula resembles the actions of kneading dough in bread making, similar to the baker’s map. It is a speculative inquiry into the abstract inner-workings of an algorithmic entity whose behaviour is presented in the sensory world through a live “audiovisualisation”, generating both sound and moving image in real-time without either following the other as in most VJ practice and sound visualisations. Furthermore, no pre-recorded audio samples, conventional synthesis methods, and pre-rendered movies and textures are used. A performance consists of an improvised duet/duel between a human and a machine, where the performer attempts to understand and control the emergent system. Performances include: Live Cinema Festival, Rome; WRO Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw; White Night 2014, Skopje; backupup_festival, Weimar; Papay Gyro Nights, Hong Kong and Orkney; PureGold Launch, Southbank Centre, London. Screenings include: DOTMOV Festival, Japan; FILE, São Paulo. Excerpts from live performance: https://vimeo.com/132419728

PulseCubes (2009) Interactive generative sound installation

PulseCubes is an interactive sound installation. Visitors are invited to become part of an implicit feedback loop whose other components include a set of small cubes on a flat surface, computer vision and digital signal processing. The cubes are tracked by a web camera positioned overhead and processed through a partially opaque system implemented in the programming environment Max/MSP/Jitter. Visitors have the opportunity to influence and interfere with the notion of time by playing with the cubes. Their placement and movement affect features of the audio such as rhythm, tempo and synthesis parameters as the passage of time is stretched and constricted. Chains of indelible "traces" are left in the position of the cubes and the resulting sonic environment and physical vibrations. Exhibited at: re:new Digital Arts Festival, Copenhagen; Sound Travels Sound Art Festival, Toronto. https://vimeo.com/9361781

David Tudor’s Rainforest IV (2009) Group sound installation/performance

Tudor’s seminal work from the 1970s is a template for what is now called sound art today. It involves resonating sound sculptures, audience interactivity, collaboration, use of found objects and feedback loops and networks. The group installation/performance took place in Area 10 Project Space in Peckham. It was a former Whitten’s warehouse which was used as an event space for several years before being closed for demolition and subsequent redevelopment. All the material used for the sound sculptures were found within the vicinity of Area 10 which included remains from the timber warehouse, discarded objects from building and development sites and general junk. The event took place within the backdrop of the changing landscape of Peckham and the tide of gentrification that was to follow. Exhibited: at Area 10 Project Space, London. http://ryoikeshiro.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/david-tudors-rainforest-iv/

Pika! Ppeonjjeog Pika! Ppeonjjeog / PPiikkaa!! PPppeeoonnjjjjeeoogg (2015) Mixed-media installation

The Korean and Japanese languages contain many onomatopoeia to describe phenomena which produce no sound e.g. how things look or feel and emotions. This mixed-media installation is based on this practice of “sound symbolism” of silent phenomena. “Pika!” and “ppeonjjeog” depict flashing light in Japanese and Korean. They were used by the K-pop group Crayon Pop in Uh-ee for which the song was deemed unfit for broadcast by Korean Broadcasting System which heavily restricts Japanese content. Various combinations of the two words may be heard in the exhibition cell: “pika! ppeonjjeog” from the original, “ppeonjjeog ppeonjjeog” from a KBS-approved version which removed a “vestige of Japanese imperialism”, and “pika! pika!” catering for the Japanese market and backlash against the “Korean Wave”. They are sung by Hatsune Miku, a sound bank from the singing voice synthesis software Vocaloid and a virtual idol claimed to be the most popular Japanese “singer” due to the volume of her output from her online user/fan base. An aural illusion equivalent to Escher’s Stairs is created whereby the pitch and speed appear to continually rise, and the repetitive wailing recalls “sound cannons” used for crowd control. The projections, 3D prints and laser-engraved crystals are created from the Menger Sponge and the Mandelbox, inspired by the well-known Mandelbrot set, and have a fractal structure similar to the sounds. It is a response to the architecture of the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju where the work was developed and exhibited, and its fetishisation of technology and media art. As well as being used in everyday speech to describe all manners of light and reflection, “pika!” also refers to the flash of light emitted from the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and

Nagasaki. The two words also aptly describe a growing number of art works from Asia where garish displays of flashing media are prevalent. Exhibited at the Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea. video documentation: https://vimeo.com/155215861 password: Uh-ee

Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! Boys! (2015) 5 Teletext pages

01 Breaking Teletext – with Kim Kardashian’s bottom

02 TeLenna – the standard test image of “Lenna”, a Playboy centrefold

03 OpTele – movement in stripes; homage to Bridget Riley

04 Infinite TeleNets – à la Yayoi Kusama, the most expensive living female artist

05 TeleISIS – retro media-savvy jihadist Broadcast for a month on ARD Text, ORF TELETEXT and ORF III TELETEXT, Swiss Text and arte Teletext as part of the International Teletext Art Festival 2015. Exhibited at Ars Electronica Festival, Linz. http://www.teletextart.com/artists/ryo-ikeshiro

Composition: White Square, White Circle (Sedition; 2013) Limited digital edition movie for screening or installation

Composition: White Square, White Circle was originally made for Sedition, a cloud-based digital art platform. It is an “audiovisualisation”, where the same data and process generate both the sound and the moving image. It is a homage to the Russian Suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich whose works include Black Square (1915), Black Circle (1915), Suprematist Composition (1916) and White on White (1918). His titles are interpreted through modern-day techniques of 3D data visualisation, complemented by the sound produced through the sonification of the same data. Simple abstract designs are used, based on folding into a square and stretching into a circle, much like kneading dough. These shapes are moved to and fro, and gently transformed into complex structures and then back again. Despite being generated by cold, geometric forms, the wave-like motion gives the work an organic quality, suggesting the cyclical character of nature. Screenings include: Cyberfest, New York; AIVA International Video Art Festival, Finspång; A-EYE: An exhibition of art and nature-inspired computation, London; Slingshot Festival, Athens, GA; MADATAC Contemporary New Media Audio-Visual Arts Festival, Madrid. https://www.seditionart.com/ryo_ikeshiro/composition_white_square_white_circle

Challa (2011) Soundtrack to audiovisual installation in collaboration with Meital Covo

Meital Covo’s Challa is a fixed-media installation video work. It brings together personal, Jewish and western symbols and myths to evoke basic human conditions. The piece was constructed from 4256 still images, depicting a five-hour process of a Challa bread rising in an oven. The multi-channel soundtrack was produced in collaboration with Ryo Ikeshiro. Most of the audio material was derived from a wooden wind chime recorded at a high sample rate which is then slowed down and played forwards and backwards. This is in an analogous manner to the rising and falling of the bread obtained through the direction of the progression through the floating, hyper-realistic video image. The heartbeat-like sounds are transformed into a wall of noise through granular synthesis and are juxtaposed with recordings of sleep talking and artefacts such as hisses, hums and foley-like sounds. These are spacialised in relation to the screen, suggesting possible associations e.g. sounds from the front representing the bread, and those from the rear, the subconscious. Screened at Sho-Zyg, London. https://vimeo.com/18812610 Password: Challa

Outsider Rehearsals (2010) with Genosong Live electronics and improvisation ensemble

Genosong is an improvising ensemble with live sampling. It incorporates live electronics as an augmentation of traditional acoustic instruments in an improvisational context through live sampling alone: no pre-recorded sounds or synthesis methods are used. A natural and organic electroacoustic soundscape is produced that acts as an additional voice in the ensemble; this results in further development of the musical material by the players that is then also sampled. The creation of this feedback allows for extremely interesting emergent behaviour where smooth and gradual processes are juxtaposed against abrupt and chaotic changes. Performances include Interlace, London. Live footage: https://vimeo.com/39468948 https://vimeo.com/39469887 Album: http://ryoikeshiro.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/genosong/

Construction in Zhuangzi (2011) Interactive generative audiovisual performance and screening

Construction in Zhuangzi is a live “audiovisualisation”: the simultaneous sonification and visualisation of the same process and data in real-time. It is based on a modified Lorenz dynamical system, a three-dimensional model of convection that is non-linear and chaotic and has sensitive dependence on initial conditions or the “butterfly effect”. It is featured in the Electronic Music volume of the Cambridge Introductions to Music series. A performance consists of an attempt at understanding and controlling the mechanisms of the near-autonomous generative system through an improvisation involving the modifications of the parameters of the Lorenz. Moments of human intervention are indicated by a colour inversion and an audio click. Lorenz stated that the equations do not produce realistic representations at large values of the parameters of the equations. In the work, these parameters are taken to beyond their original real-world limits in order to explore a speculative world. An appropriately machinic or post-human sensibility is evoked through a digital noise/glitch presentation of the emergent phenomena. Performances include: ICMC, Ljubljana; Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium; Redsonic, London; Southbank Centre, London; Seeing Sound, Bath. Screenings of fixed-media version include: Fresh Minds Festival, TX – 2nd prize; MADATAC Contemporary New Media Audio-Visual Arts Festival, Madrid; Videomedeja International Video Festival, Novi Sad. Excerpts: https://youtu.be/-q5r5Ukxqzg

Construction in Self (2009) Generative electronic music work

Construction in Self is a generative work based on the Lorenz dynamical system. It has sensitive dependence on initial conditions, giving rise to what is commonly known as the “butterfly effect”. Its generative form is suggested by this property and the work takes an input prior to performance as initial conditions from which a different piece is produced each time. A diverse variety of behaviours are observed ranging from periodicity to chaos that yield interesting results as signal, control and meta data, suggesting a self-similar microcosm that is complex yet deterministic which can be replicated from the same initial input. The title is a reference to Cage’s Construction in Metal series (1939-42) in which simple sequences of numbers – referred to as “rhythmic structures” – are used as a basis for structures at different time-scales. Performances include: Festival di Nuova Musica, Udine; ICMC, New York. https://archive.org/details/CiSv02

Album III (cs128; 2008) released on Creative Sources Recordings with ry-om Live electronics and improvisation duo

Performances include Battersea Arts Centre, Corsica Studios and Resonance FM, London. http://www.creativesourcesrec.com/catalog/catalog_128.html