Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda (born in 1966) lives and works in Paris and Kyoto. He 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 through live performances, installations, books and CD’s such as datamatics (2006 -), test pattern (2008 -), spectra (2001 -), cyclo. a collaborative project with Carsten Nicolai, superposition (2012 -), supersymmetry (2014 -) and micro | macro (2015 -).
He performs and exhibits worldwide at spaces such as Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Singapore Art Museum, Ars Electronica Center Linz, Elektra Festival Montreal, Grec and Sonar Festivals Barcelona, Aichi Triennale Nagoya, Palazzo Grassi Venice, Park Avenue Armory New York, The Whitechapel Gallery London, The Barbican Centre and Somerset House London, Museo de Arte Bogota, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, DHC/Art Montreal, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Sharjah Biennale, Carriageworks Sydney, Auckland Triennale, MONA Museum Hobart – Tasmania, Ruhrtriennale, Telefonica Foundation Madrid and Kyoto Experiment Festival, ACT Centre Gwangju (Korea), Singapore Art Science Museum, Kunstverein Hannover, RuhrTriennale, Festival d’Automne and Pompidou Center, Barbican, The Vinyl Factory, and ZKM centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, among others.
In 2016-17, he premiered the acoustic stage piece music for percussion in collaboration with ensemble Eklekto (Geneva) which is currently on tour. He took part in group exhibitions such as Elevation 1049: Avalanche (Gstaad, CH), Centre Pompidou Metz (FR), La Villette/Festival d’Automne (Paris, FR), Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA (Los Angeles, USA) and presented a drone symphony, A [for 100 cars], commissioned by Red Bull Music Academy Festival Los Angeles.
In 2018, he is part of group exhibitions such as “Artistes and Robots”, Grand Palais (Paris, FR), “Experience Traps”, Middelheim Museum (Antwerp, BE) among others, and presents solo exhibitions at Centre Pompidou (Paris, FR), Carriageworks (Sydney, AU) Garage (Moscow, Russia) and Eye Film Museum (Amsterdam, NL). In June, he will be launching spectra as a permanent installation at Mona, Hobart (Tasmania, AU). He will present concert pieces in Centre Pompidou / Festival ManiFeste (Paris, FR), and Spiral Hall (Tokyo, JP).
His albums +/- (1996), 0°C (1998), matrix (2000), dataplex (2005), test pattern (2008) and supercodex (2013) pioneered a new minimal world of electronic music through his razor-sharp techniques and aesthetics. The Solar System (2016) a limited edition vinyl and music for percussion (2017) was released by The Vinyl Factory. In early 2018, He established his online source under the name of "codex | edition".
He is the award winner of the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN 2014.
