Hide: Kenji Kojima's Biography & Artist Statement Kenji Kojima's Biography
Since the early '90s, I have been conducting experiments exploring the connections between perception, cognition, technology, music, and visual art. I was born in Japan and relocated to New York in 1980. During my first decade in the city, I dedicated myself to painting using medieval art materials and techniques, specifically egg tempera. Notably, my paintings were acquired by Citibank, Hess Oil, and other collectors. The '80s witnessed rapid advancements in personal computers, and I found myself increasingly drawn to the realm of computer art, which offered a greater sense of comfort. Thus, in the early '90s, I made the transition from traditional artworks to digital creations. The New Museum - Rhizome in New York archives my early digital works. In 2007, I developed the computer software "RGB MusicLab" and embarked on an interdisciplinary exploration of the interplay between images and music. As part of the "Techno Synesthesia" project in 2014, I programmed the software "Luce." My digital art series, "Techno Synesthesia," has been showcased in exhibitions across New York, as well as in media art festivals worldwide, spanning Europe, Brazil, Asia (excluding Japan), and online exhibitions hosted by ACM SIGGRAPH and FILE, among others. In 2015, my anti-nuclear artwork titled "Composition FUKUSHIMA 2011" was added to the CTF Collective Trauma Film Collections / ArtvideoKoeln. I am a skilled LiveCode programmer. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, I initiated the project "From Classical Paintings to Music," delving into internet-based research for source materials. Presently, my latest endeavor revolves around digital drawing, specifically the creation of "PORTRAIT ICONS." Kenji Kojima Resume
Artist Statement
I have been thinking the sense of visual and audio has strong connections. Some people believe the painter Wassily Kandinsky was a synesthesia artist. But I have a suspicion whether he had synesthesia abilities or not. Artistic intuition is important, but the ability of synesthesia is too uncertain. Despite that, I thought the sense of vision and the sense of hearing might have common areas. A composer Alexander Scriabin tried another way. He composed the symphony "Prometheus: Poem of Fire" in 1910. He imagined a symphony of sound combined with a symphony of light. He made his system which was the 12-color circle. The top of the color circle was Red and C. Each color was assigned to 12 keys. The idea was based on Isaac Newton's color wheel. He wrote the light (luce) part of the score by musical notations in the symphony. However, his vision did not realize the technological limits of his own time. 100 years later, the performance of his work was realized by recent technologies. Composer Scriabin explored the common information of visual and auditory with the art of different expressions.
I was more interested in Scriabin's method than in using intuition for synesthesia art. We can use computer technology in the 21st century. I developed an algorithmic composition program "RGB MusicLab" in 2007 that converted computer color data to 12-tone notes. The color value 120 is the middle C on a musical scale. Also, I found binary is a new art material. The current project "Techno Synesthesia" is based on RGB Music technology.
A cyborg is a radical evolution of physical extension that uses science and technology in the 21st century. We have evolved extremely slowly to recognize the surrounding environment through sensory organs such as visual, auditory, tactile, and others, and realize them as reality. However, we do not know how we perceive our environment, the boundaries of sensory information, and how we handle them and choose our actions. What was the difference between humans and deep-sea creatures that have evolved to distinguish information from the outside world? The project "Techno Synesthesia" inherits the predecessors and experiments with the fusion and compatibility of multiple sensory organs by computer technology.
Hide: Kenji Kojima's Biography & Artist Statement
"Stop, Caution, Walk" by Kenji Kojima
Egg Tempera, Gold Leaf on Panel. 10x10" Triptych, 1980 Kenji's Egg Tempera Paintings 1980-2004
I started my artist career in 1980 as a contemporary egg tempera artist.
A personal computer was improved rapidly during the '80s.
I felt digital art was more comfortable and clean.
I switched my artwork to digital in the early '90s.
Now I am interested in how we perceive the outside world
more than constructing physical art.
2024
Bee Bances / Buzzin' Bees, 2024
Climate Messages from Rap and Aria
Copy It, Share It. 2024
Micky Mouse "Steamboat Willie" in the Public Domain Now!
クリエイティブ・コモンズ
CC BY 4.0 DEED
Attribution 4.0 International
under Creative Commons License.
時間系不定時報
JIKANKEI “FUJYO JIHOU” 2002 - 2012
The Sun goes around on Spaceship Earth.
JIKANKEI is a software art. It displays angles of the Sun
and local times of cities and places on the Earth.