New York, NY
Born 1935, Tokyo, Japan
Since the seventies, my work has been distinguished through the conversion of text into music via images. The conversion started with a performance piece, Voice and Phenomenon (1976), in which I used Chinese Characters from 8th century poems to convert into images. The piece developed into Molecular Music (1982), a film consisting of images converted from written text. Chinese characters of poetic text are converted with a sound generating device, an oscillator connected to light sensors attached to the screen, so that the images projected onto the screen change the sound as the images change. This method developed to digital means in 1992 with Musica Iconologos, a piece based on the converted images of the written text of ancient Chinese poems, which are scanned and digitized. The digital data is converted into sound by computer program. These sounds derive other sounds with a critique of the medium in use. Other such pieces include Music for 2CD Players and Solo for Wounded CD, in which numeric values of digital data is altered by physically damaging the CD surfaces.
I have also created sound installations since 1962, and since 1965 I started to make sound interact with the audience. One such venue includes a Volkswagen Showroom in Tokyo. A recent exhibit was shown in Yokohama Triennale in 2001, in which a museum guide was used as an intervention between the exhibited works and the audience.
BA., Literature, National Chiba University, Japan
2003 I Moderni, The Moderns, Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Torino, Italy.
2003 Yasunao Tone, a self titled album, (Asphodel), USA.
2002 Spectacle Vivant, Centre George Pompidou, Paris.
2001 Bitstream, a digital art work show, Whitney Museum, New York, NY
2001 Solo concert at Ashiya museum, Ashiya Japan.
2001 Wounded Man'yo #38-9, (Alku, Plincipo 39) Spain.
1998 Solo for Wounded CD, solo album, (Tzadik) USA.
1993 Musica Iconologos, solo album, (Lovely Music) USA.
2002 Goden Nica prize in digital music by Prix Ars Electronica
1996-97 Individual Artist Award for Media, from New York State Council on the Art
1986 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant in performance/Emerging Art Forms.
1982 National Endowment for the Arts Collaboration fellowship.
