Yasunao Tone
Yasunao Tone (b. 1935, Tokyo) was one of the first Japanese artists active in composing \"events\" and improvisational music. He is one of the founding members of Japan\'s Fluxus movement and has also been an organizer and participant in many important music and performance groups such as Group Ongaku, Hi-Red Center, Team Random (the first computer art group organized in Japan). Primarily a composer, Tone has worked in many media, creating pieces for electronics, computer systems, film, radio and television, as well as environmental art. He is a pioneer in the use of prepared CDs.
Yasunao Tone (b. 1935, Tokyo) was one of the first Japanese artists active in composing \"events\" and improvisational music. He is one of the founding members of Japan\'s Fluxus movement and has also been an organizer and participant in many important music and performance groups such as Group Ongaku, Hi-Red Center, Team Random (the first computer art group organized in Japan). Primarily a composer, Tone has worked in many media, creating pieces for electronics, computer systems, film, radio and television, as well as environmental art. He is a pioneer in the use of prepared CDs.
AI Deviation #1, #2
Yasunao Tone on AI Deviation #1, #2: "I have had an idea if I apply the neural network to create my sound work for long time. When I had a performance at Centre Pompidou with Peter Rehberg and other friends I tried to talk about the idea with a French guy from IRCAM. But, he couldn't understand my idea, which by using neural network the sound I create would never have any repetitions. That was 2002 and I had to wait until 2015 when I had a grant from New York State Council on the Arts through IS…
MP3 Deviations #8
"The MP3 Deviation album contains pieces that are results of the collaborative research by a team of the New Aesthetics in Computer Music (NACM) and myself, led by Tony Myatt at Music Research Center at the University of York in UK in 2009. My idea was to develop new software based on the disruption of the MP3. Primarily I thought the MP3 as a reproducing device could have created a very new sound by intervention between its main elements, the compression encoder and decoder. It turned ou…
Double Automatism
New York City's experimental duo Talibam! team up with Fluxus artist and electronic avant-gardist Yasunao Tone and trombonist Sam Kulik for a confrontational sonic attack, fired by an array of analog synths and other electronic devices. David Novak, author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (2013), on Double Automatism: "Bringing together the most calamitous materials from their home planets of noise, glitch, and free improvisation, Tone and Talibam! are at once the likeliest and …
Convulsive Threshold
Two heavyweight explorers of sound and technology, Russell Haswell and Yasunao Tone, both undertaking separate rigorous experiments into the synthesis of sound and all its remits, converge for one helluva collaborative work. ‘Convulsive Threshold’ is the result of years of research and experimentation, Haswell’s systems of hybrid analogue/digital audio generation acting as one of the starting points for this relentess piece of material, which are then subjected to Tone’s MP3 Deviation tec…
MP3 Deviations #6+7
Yasunao Tone creates music by means of disrupting MP3-files. Sound files that were corrupted in the MP3 generate error messages, which are then utilized to assign various lengths of samples automatically. Feeding also different play back speeds creates a sound which is always different – unpredictable and unknowable. The MP3 Deviation album contains pieces that are results of the collaborative research by a team of the New Aesthetics in Computer Music (NACM) and myself, led by Tony Myatt…
Musica simulacra
Tone Yasunao's lifework, "MUSICA SIMULACRA," planned and produced for 14 years, has finally been completed. ATAK releases a limited edition box set (limited to 500 in the world) including more than 2000 hours of 4516 Manyosyu poems recreated in sound using Tone's original software on CD-ROM, over 60 minutes of 12 pieces extracted from the CD-ROM and edited by Keiichiro Shibuya on audio CD, a 47 pages booklet written by Tone himself and a limited edition autograph. This is the intersection …
Event
How's this for a threesome; in the red corner we have Christian Marclay with a box of records and his trusty turntables, in the blue corner it's twinkle-toes Yasunao Tone and his prepared CD's and players, whilst in the, erm, green corner stands Christian Wolff and his one man band of bass, percussive stuff, radio-cassette recorder and melodica. FIGHT! Recorded live way-back-when in 1998 as improvised accompaniment to a Merce Cunningham Dance Company performance, 'Event' is a single 50 minute pi…
Solo For Wounded
A founding member of the Fluxus Movement with Takehisa Kosugi, Yoko Ono and George Maciunas, Yasunao Tone has been doing experimental sound pieces since the early 1960s. For the past ten years much of his work has centered on extending the possibilities of CDs as a performance medium. With this new CD, Tone has created a new noise music for the 21st century: a symphony of digital errors that reaches a new extreme in intensity and musical energy
Noise media language
A pioneer since the early 60s in sound art and digital composition, yasunao Tone has composed for Merce Cunningham (alongside John Cage) and been a member of the groups Ongaku, Hi-Red Center, and Fluxus. He is unabashedly avant-garde and continues today to engage questions of noise, language, and systems of representation. This indispensable monograph catalogues the artist's career through documentation of seminal projects. Including a cd of works ranging from early performance experiments to cu…
Geography And Music
Small overview of yasunao tone’s life / work / art, including a 3”cd containing a 1979 piece performed by david tudor, john cage, takehisa kosugi, martin kalve, and yoshiharu suenobu.
Musica Iconologos
A surprising release from the radical Fluxus composer, Yasunao Tone
- an encoded description of the visual image in utmost detail. In the
mythical future, somebody can translate the sounds of this compact disc
back into pictures. Personnel: Yasunao Tone and Craig Kendall - image selection and processing; Craig Kendall - computer programming, digital sound creation, manipulation; John D.S. Adams - assistant producer and audio consultant.