The Monkees - Porpoise Song (Theme From HEAD)

Nice article on Araki by Andrew Lee

And the Japanese art scene certainly
differs from other countries. Takashi
Murakami and other Japanese artists
argue that there is no distinction between
high and low art in Japan because “art”
was a concept introduced from the west.
Araki agrees. “In my mind there is
absolutely no hierarchy. Just like all
women are beautiful. I really don’t like
the idea of what is right and what is
wrong. What is sacred, what is profane.
What is art and what is obscene. I don’t
want that kind of categorisation.

http://homepage.mac.com/a.lee/main/writing/araki221005.pdf

Pixel Perfect

The New Yorker interviews photo retouch master Dangin Pascal.

LINK

Japan sings for Turkey

Take a look at these films. They are each just one minute long. They feature a choir in one country singing another country's national anthem: a simple idea that packs surprising emotional power.
--Chris Anderson, TED Curator

Japan sings for Turkey
France sings for USA
Kenya sings for India

Absolut Machines

Cool machines music installation.



You can visit the machine in person. It is on display @
186 Orchard st
(between Stanton and Houston)
NY NY 10002

until April 25th, 2008.

TOKYO REALTIME: update

Created a DIGG post for the new audio tour series.
DIGG THIS?

TOKYO REALTIME: KABUKICHO

Updated the teaser page for the White Rabbit Press TOKYO REALTIME series. Site should be up by end of the month.

If you have a blog of your own, it would be awesome if you'd post a link to www.tokyorealtime.com!

We Come in Peace (to sell expensive handbags)

Chanel Mobile Art Container Site with artist profiles and vid

(thanks to Spencer for heads-up)

PauseTalk Photo Pool

We recently setup a flickr Photo Pool for our PauseTalk design group.



What is PauseTalk?
PauseTalk is a monthly meeting of Tokyo-based creatives. We meet on the first Monday of each month starting at 20:00 in Cafe Pause in Ikebukuro. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can share and discuss their current projects, meet other creatives for potential collaboration, and keep their thumb on cultural currents. PauseTalk was founded by Jean Snow who writes about design in Tokyo and works at White Rabbit Press where he is co-producer on a top-secret project.

Ikeda Ryoji's first solo exhibition

Ikeda Ryoji's first solo exhibition will be held at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media from 2008-03-01 to 2008-05-08. I'm definitely going, and you should go too.

How many points are there in a line?
What is the number of numbers?
How can we verify that the random is random?

data.tron and data.film are parts of the datamatics project, which is a series of experiments that explore such questions, physically and mathematically. Visitors will experience the vast universe of data in the infinite between 0 and 1.

About Ikeda Ryoji (compiled from forma arts and media producers content)
Japan's leading electronic composer/artist, Ryoji Ikeda, focuses on the minutiae of ultrasonics, frequencies and the essential characteristics of sound itself.

Since 1995, Ikeda has been intensely active through concerts, installations, and recordings, integrating 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’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 recordings. 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's critically acclaimed, seventh solo album, dataplex (raster-noton, 2005), and the new release, test pattern (raster-noton, 25 February 2008) are part of the datamatics series.

Read more about datamastics here on the FORMA website.

Ryoji Ikeda's website is here.

Yamaguchi Center for the Arts and Media link here.