Ryoji Ikeda (Gifu, Japan, 1966) lives and works in Paris, France and Kyoto, Japan. As Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist, Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations. Alongside pure musical activity, Ikeda has been working on long-term projects through live performances, installations, books and CD’s such as 'datamatics' (2006-), 'test pattern' (2008-), 'spectra' (2001-), ‘cyclo’ a collaborative project with Carsten Nicolai, and ‘superposition’ (2012-).
He has performed and held exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Singapore Art Museum, Ars Electronica Center Linz, Elektra Festival Montreal, Grec and Sonar Festivals Barcelona, Aichi Triennale Nagoya, Palazzo Grassi Venice, Park Avenue Armory New York, Barbican Center London, Museo de Arte Bogota, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, DHC/Art Montreal, Festival d’Automne Paris, Sharjah Biennale, Carriageworks Sydney, Auckland Triennale, MONA Museum Hobart – Tasmania, Ruhrtriennale, Telefonica Foundation Madrid, MoMA New York, Kyoto Experiment Festival among others. In 2014, he is touring his new performance ‘superposition’ in the US (The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, UMS in Ann Arbor and Center for the Arts of Performance in Los Angeles) and in Europe. He will present solo exhibitions in YCAM (Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media) Japan, Le lieu Unique Nantes (France), Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal (MAM), and Haus für Elektronische Kunst, Basel. He is the award winner of the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN 2014"
His albums +/- (1996), 0°C (1998), matrix (2000), dataplex (2005), test pattern (2008) and supercodex (2013) pioneered a new minimal world of electronic music through his razor-sharp techniques and aesthetics.