Robin Fox (AUS)

Robin Fox is an audio-visual artist working across live performance, exhibitions, public art projects and dance. His work ‘Laser Show’ which synchronizes sound and visual electricity in hyper-amplified 3D space has been performed worldwide with highlights including the Henie Onstad Kunstcenter, Oslo, Mois Multi Festival, Quebec City, Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz, Musica Genera Festival, Warsaw and the Yokohama Triennale.

His groundbreaking work with Chunky Move Dance Company has contributed to the work Mortal Engine receiving a Helpmann award for best visual production and an honourable mention at the the illustrious Prix Ars Electronica 2009. He has also performed with the likes of Oren Ambarchi, Lasse Marhaug, Jerome Noetinger, Stephen O’Malley and Erick D’Orion among numerous other encounters. His recent work Interior Design: Music for the Bionic Ear in association with ANAT and the Bionic Ear Institute, has been shortlisted for a Future Everything award in the UK 2011. His current projects include designing and building a giant theremin for the City of Melbourne.

Robin Fox

Robin Fox Laser Show

Evala (JPN)

Sound artist Evala (Hirohito Ebara) has been active in the Tokyo sound art scene since 2002, both as a sound designer for a range of videos and sound installations, and as a composer/performer in his own right. He founded the label Port in 2004, and has collaborated with artists such as Keiichiro Shibuya (ATAK), Takashi Ikegami and Yoshihide Nakajima (studio loup), and currently works as a part-time lecturer at the Tokyo University of the Arts

He has released three solo recordings from his own Port imprint. These include “initial”, an album constructed from artificially edited field recordings, "ttm studies 08" which used complex systems theory in its construction, and "acoustic bend" which incorporates field recordings in dense, innovatively phased spatial arrangements. In addition to his many performances at high profile venues throughout Japan – including the prestigious YCAM – he has also appeared overseas, most notably at Berlin’s Club Transmediale in 2009.

Evala

Port Label

Toshimaru Nakamura (JPN)

A free improvising performer who uses 'no-input mixing board' to create electronic music, Toshimaru Nakamura (sound artist, musician) has been cultivating a unique world of tones from this unlikely instrument for over 15 years. He uses his mixing console as a live, interactive musical instrument, by connecting the input of the board to the output, then manipulating the resultant audio feedback. Nakamura's music has been described as "sounds ranging from piercing high tones and shimmering whistles to galumphing, crackle-spattered bass patterns."

Nakamura has recorded solo albums and has collaborated with Yoshihide Otomo, Keith Rowe, John Butcher, and Nicholas Bussmann among others. He has also collaborated with Taku Sugimoto, Tetuzi Akiyama, dancer Kim Ito, drummer Jason Kahn, and Sachiko M.

Toshimaru Nakamura

Toshimaru Nakamura on YouTube

BOLT Ensemble (AUS)

The BOLT Ensemble (flute: Belinda Woods, harp: Mary Doumany, double bass: Anita Hustas, percussion: Daniel Buess, vocals/electronics: James Hullick) is dedicated to performing the music and sonic art projects of James Hullick, who the director of JOLT Arts Inc, and who is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Music, Mind and Wellbeing Initiative. The ensemble was formed in 2004 and has worked extensively with technology and on community development projects.

Elephants performed The NIS – a large show working with robotic machinery and real time interactive video scores. Recently BOLT premiered works by Hullick at TERRAINS: JOLT Swiss Australian Sonic Festival (2011) and completed recordings of new works with ABC Classic FM in Melbourne (2012).

BOLT Ensemble

Masayuki Kawai + Ryota Hamasaki (JPN)

Masayuki Kawai (video artist, writer and curator) creates video works informed by radical visions of philosophy and politics, particularly from the standpoint of observation and criticism of informational societies. His work has been shown in over 30 countries worldwide, garnering awards in a number of media art festivals and exhibitions. He established the non-profit organization Videoart Center Tokyo in 2001 and served as the organizational head until 2004.

His most current work, created through feedback and the amplification of signals and noise from video editing machines, was recently shown at Tokyo’s MOT. Using a similar method when performing live, he and collaborator Ryota Hamasaki (visual artist) improvise with analogue video feedback, using some heavyweight editing gear to achieve their hallucinatory results. Weighing up to 100 kilograms, these equipment and effectors are used to transform flickering video signals into abstract rhythm and textures that are as intense as they are sublime.

Masayuki Kawai

Masayuki Kawai on YouTube

Cal Lyall (CND/JPN)

Musical nomad since first discovering the malleability of 4-track tape, Cal Lyall is a guitarist and sound artist currently based in Tokyo, Japan. An early interest in diverse musical forms led to intense travel and study throughout Southeast Asia and the Subcontinent, including lengthy visits to India, Pakistan and Iran. Creating a musical universe constructed from field recordings, stringed instruments, microphone systems and other electronic debris, he continues to explore the possibilities of traditional forms in numerous projects (Tetragrammaton, Jahiliyyah, Palimpsest, Missing Man Foundation), incorporating influences ranging from free-flowing drone to ecstatic improvisation.

He also performs as a solo artist with a number of distinctive artists, such as Tetuzi Akiyama, Tim Olive, Chihei Hatakeyama, Kelly Churko, Yoshio Machida, Government Alpha and Chie Mukai, among others. With an active performance schedule in Japan and past tours through Thailand, Laos, China and Korea, he also heads up the Subvalent record label, oversees the Tokyo Hub of Jolt Sonic Arts (Australia) and organizes the long-running Test Tone series at Super-Deluxe in Nishi-Azabu, Tokyo.

Cal Lyall on Subvalent

Cal Lyall at Jolt Arts

Cal Lyall on Vimeo

Yukitomo Hamasaki (JPN)

Founder of Tokyo-based sound and art publishing concern mAtter, Yukitomo Hamasaki (composer, artist, independent curator) creates works influenced by light, architecture and minimalism, particularly the complex patterns and collisions occurring in what he refers to as “micro spaces”. His compositions reveal a deep appreciation of harmonic structure, layering sounds in textures that seem to leave the listener suspended in time. Interspersed with irregular clicks, pops and beeps, the narrow interruptions reveal the careful attention to detail in his music, captured in his 2008 release, D+P. In 2012, he released "the GARDEN" which aims to express the ironies of the post-3-11 situation in Japan through a new working method, similar to planting processes by gardeners.

Aside from his work as a composer, he conceives installation pieces, curates exhibitions, and works in graphic design; a range of formats (both print and sound) is being published through his own imprint since 2010.

Yukitomo Hamasaki (matter)

Evil Penguin

Master of disguises, Mexican top-hats, ambient rockabilly to minimal Hawaiian Kumulipo chants, the Evil Penguin poses the primordial question of evanescence against a backdrop of New Wave folk. Celebratory, subliminal, moment-to-moment. A Tasmanian treasure with a penchant for open spaces.