You is giving a keynote lecture titled “Remembrances of Things Past, No.2” at the Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium held at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. He is scheduled to perform from 16:30 on September 27. Here is the abstract.
September 20, 2024
You has a new article titled IEIE, Reflected, Reflected in the new issue of the online journal METODE published by ROM for kunst og arkitektur. It reflects on the recent endeavor to realize Island Eye Island Ear in Hokkaido, Japan, through an assemblage of seven stories, each of which, due to their relative coherence, could be regarded as islands of narrative, thus forming together a virtual archipelago.
You is presenting a new version of Island Eye Island Ear for the Loften International Art Festival in Northern Norway. This time, in addition to the sound beams, we will have the kites of Jackie Matisse Monnier and mirrors by Margaretha Asberg. The piece will be performed twice over the opening weekend (September 21 and 22, 12-15pm). There will also be a related symposium on the 21st.
April 1, 2024
We are organizing a concert by the pianist Satoko Inoue focusing on the prepared piano. She will be performing John Cage’s 《Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano》in its entirety, alongside pieces for "non-prepared" piano. Attendance is limited to the same number of people as the keys of the piano (88), so if you are interested, please apply using this form.
March 1, 2024
The Department of Avant-Garde Arts (chaired by You Nakai) is presenting a special workshop by Daniel Fishkin focusing on the magical instrument "Abrasson" that a French magician invented and taught Daniel how to make them. It will take place on March 15, at Komaba campus of the University of Tokyo. Participation is limited to 10 people, so if you are interested, please apply using this form.
January 23, 2024
For this year's Sapporo International Art Festival, You Nakai is presenting the results of his multi-year collaboration with SIAF-Lab to realize David Tudor’s 《Island Eye Island Ear》 in Hokkaido. On February 17 and 18, the virtual reality piece 《Virtual IEIE (Last Year in Kamomejima) 》that You created (using the materials taken during the "test-run" on Kamomejima island conducted last November) will be shown in the 360-degrees virtual reality theatre at the University of Hokkaido. An accompanying durational symposium titled 《Virtual Ground Hotel》 assembling many people who we met during our two-year endeavor to find an island will be held on February 17.
November 23, 2023
You Nakai is going to give an artist talk on December 6 from 18:45 at the Building 18 hall in Komaba campus, the University of Tokyo, as part of the series "Doing Air through Arts." Since the whole series is funded by Daikin, a company manufacturing air conditioners and air purifiers, the assigned topic is the artistic use of air, so together with the artist and rock musician Yoshihito Mizuuchi, You is presenting a performance lecture entitled "The Air in Our Bodies: Doing Air through Farts" which explores the phenomenon of flatulence in relation to recent project concerning air and the notion of the virtual.
November 3, 2023
You Nakai will be conducting a test-run of Island Eye Island Ear on Kamomejima in Hokkaido over the weekend of November 25-26 as part of Side Project. On November 27, there will be a related symposium "IEIE, Reflected: phase 3: No Wo/Man Is an Island: From Knavelskar to Kamomejima (1974-2024)" in Sapporo Community Plaza with members of Side Project and special guests Marianne Hultman, Kjersti Solbakken and Berte Ynnesdal from Lofoten International Art Festival where we plan to present another version of IEIE next year.
June 23, 2023
SELOUT is curating the sixth seminar of influentology on September 30 at the 900 auditorium in Komaba campus, the University of Tokyo. The invited lecturer will be the renowned musician Kenji Ozawa, who will be talking about "The Influentology of Images". He will also be performing some songs, including a new one written especially for this occasion. This event is by application only (and only in Japanese), so please check out the following form if you are interested in participating.
February 3, 2023
Here's the film documentation of the Zoomusic concert we organized with Tokyo Gen'On Project in December 2022.
February 1, 2023
You Nakai will be co-curating an exhibition as part of the ongoing Side Project which explores the realizability of David Tudor's unrealized project Island Eye Island Ear in Hokkaido. This is the second show after the first one we presented last August, and it will focus on both the islands we have examined so far, as well as interviews conducted with scholars and hunters and artists who we met during our research as a series of side-effects of this endeavor.
January 29, 2023
You Nakai is going to give a lecture titled "Karmic Relationships, Accelerated: Influences & Incidents in India (and Beyond)" as part of the CTM Festival in Berlin on February 2. Details are here.
December 6, 2022
You Nakai is going to curate a zoomusic concert in collaboration with Tokyo Gen'On Project. With new works by G Douglas Barrett, Jenn Kirby, Varun Kishore, Aiko Kono, Akiko Koga, and Koki Fukuda. The concert will be held simultaneously online and offline (in Tokyo). Details are here.
You Nakai is co-curating IEIE, Reflected [Phase 1], as part of the three-year long SIDE PROJECT aimed at realizing the unrealized project Island Eye Island Ear in Hokkaido, Japan. Phase 1 will consist of two events: an experimental workshop focused on sound beams using ultrasonic loudspeakers (August 21), as well as the exhibition IEIE Chronicles, which charts out the time line of events (and their side-effects) related to Island Eye Island Ear (August 28-September 4).
June 15, 2022
You Nakai will be part of Unexpected Territories, a ten-day festival on David Tudor's music in Berlin from July 1-10, participating in a round table, a lecture workshop on Island Eye Island Ear, as well as a performance of Monobirds.
June 1, 2022
You Nakai is presenting a paper titled "Archival Weatherings" as part of the group presentation ARCHIVING POST-1960s MUSICS: FOUR EXPERIENCES OF ENGAGEMENT at the conference of American Musical Instrument Society in Calgary.
You Nakai is going to be part of a zoomusic concert happening over the weekend. This will present the results of a virtual residency that No Collective has been doing at the University of Virginia. Details are here.
what & WHO
hoSted by You Nakai at the university of Tokyo, SIDE EFFECTS LAB EXPLORES THE PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURES OF PERFORMANCE BY PAYING ATTENTION TO THE PHENOMENA OF BYPRODUCTS AND SIDE EFFECTS
RESEARCH
We conduct research on various fields of interest which extend from and merge in issues of performance and side effects.
PERFORMANCE
We create various forms of performances, while also searching ways to frame various phenomena as performance.
PUBLICATION
We publish what we discovered, made, or conceived, through various channels and platforms across the world.
YOU NAKAI
You makes music(ians), dance(rs), haunted musical mansions, nursery rhymes, and other forms of performances as a member of No Collective, and publishes experimental children’s books written by children and other literary oddities as a member of Already Not Yet. In addition to his artistic activity, You also conducts research on various topics related to performance, and has been engaged in an extensive study of David Tudor’s music, the results of which have been recently compiled into Reminded by the Instruments: David Tudor’s Music (Oxford University Press, 2021). You currently works as associate professor at the University of Tokyo with a joint appointment at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Culture and Representation Course) and the Art Center of the University of Tokyo (ACUT). He is also the chair (and one of the only two members) of the Department of Avant-garde Arts which he founded in 2023.
FUTURE
performance, publication, presentation
PUBLICATION
THE Missing Parts: E.A.T. Records (sets the record straight)
WHEN：September 10, 2024 - February 23, 2025 WHERE：Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California
During the opening weekend of the Lofoten International Art Festival in northern Norway, You Nakai will present a new version of Island Eye Island Ear, David Tudor's unfinished project to transform an entire island into a musical instrument, following the VR version presented at the Sapporo International Art Festival in February. In addition to the sound beams, the new version will include kites by Jackie Mathis Monnier, one of the original members of the project, and mirrors by Margaretha Asberg. A related symposium will be held as well.
RESEARCH
INFLUENTOLOGY OF GRAVES SEMINAR
WHEN：June 4, 19, July 5, 2024｜19:00- WHERE：Collaboration Room 1, Building 18, Komaba campus, The University of Tokyo
S.E.L.O.U.T. have been employing a methodology to indirectly capture the behavior of the concept of "influence" by examining specific topics through its optics. For the past year, we have been focusing on the topic of “graves,” a singular artifact with which all people are forced to come to terms sooner or later in one way or another. We will hold a new series of influentology seminars in order to decipher from various perspectives the network of hidden actions that are revealed by rethinking the grave, which is often entangled in the community of the remaining living, as an “instrument of influence” that can produce effects that reach beyond one's own life, and even beyond the life of the current community, into the indeterminate future. Please register here to join.
PERFORMANCE
The Contrivance of Prepared Piano
WHEN：May 17, 2024｜19：00 WHERE：Music Practice Room, Komaba campus, The University of Tokyo
The Prepared Piano, invented by John Cage in the late 1930s, is an instrument in which bolts and other physical objects are inserted into the strings of an ordinary piano to change the sound of the notes corresponding to each key. This experiment, which began as an ingenious idea to transform a single piano into a percussion ensemble, became the forerunner of various experiment to dismantle the piano, a privileged instrument at the center of Western music. The Piano Committee of the University of Tokyo, chaired by You Nakai, is inviting the pianist Satoko Inoue, a leading expert in extended techniques, to present a concert that will reconsider the technique of preparation through a program including both prepared piano and non-prepared piano. Cage's major work, Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, will be performed in its entirety alongside contemporary piano pieces written after the prepared piano. An audience equal to the number of piano keys (88) will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. Also, those who wish (first 10 people) can observe the process of preperation.
PERFORMANCE
The Contrivance of Arbrasson
WHEN：March 15, 2024｜15:30-18:30 WHERE：Class 109, Building 1, Komaba campus, The University of Tokyo
American musician and instrument maker Daniel Fishkin will give a workshop on the creation of a mysterious instrument called the Arbrasson. The instrument was invented by a French magician, who taught Daniel how to make it, but he was not allowed to sell it for nine years, during which time he made a contract with Daniel to concentrate on spreading its creation around the world through workshops. After a brief lecture and demonstration by Daniel on the history of the Albrasson, participants will learn the basics of making their own Albrasson using simple hand tools such as a double-edged saw and a canner. Nao Nishihara and You Nakai will participate as moderators. Applications will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis (up to 10 people).
PRESENTATION
IEIE, REFLECTED: PHASE 4: VIRTUAL GROUND
WHEN：February 17-18, 2024 WHERE：The University of Sapporo, Virtual Reality Theater
As part of Side Project, You Nakai will be presenting a virtual reality piece Virtual IEIE (Last Year in Kamomejima) which enables viewers to re-experience the realization of Island Eye Island Ear on Kamomejima. This presentation will be part of the Sapporo International Art Festival 2014, and will be accompanied by an extravagant symposium titled Virtual Grand Hotel in which we will assemble as many people as possible who we met during our 2-year-long exploration of the project, to explore the fruits and potential future developments of all the byproducts and side effects of our effort to realize IEIE in Hokkaido.
PERFORMANCE
DOING AIR THROUGH FARTS
WHEN：December 6, 2023, 18:45- WHERE：Building 18 Hall, Komaba Campus, The University of Tokyo
You Nakai is going to give an artist talk on December 6 from 18:45 at the Building 18 hall in Komaba campus, the Unviersity of Tokyo, as part of the series "Doing Air through Arts." Since the whole series is funded by Daikin, a company manufacturing air conditioners and air purifiers, the assigned topic is the artistic use of air, so together with the artist and rock musician Yoshihito Mizuuchi, You is presenting a performance lecture entitled "The Air in Our Bodies: Doing Air through Farts" which explores the phenomenon of flatulence in relation to recent project concerning air and the notion of the virtual.
PRESENTATION
IEIE, REFLECTED: PHASE 3: NO Wo/MAN IS AN ISLAND: FROM KNAVELSKAR TO KAMOMEJIMA (1974-2024)
WHEN：November 27, 2023 WHERE：Sapporo Cultural Arts Community Center
You Nakai will be conducting a test-run of Island Eye Island Ear on Kamomejima in Hokkaido over the weekend of November 25-26 as part of Side Project. On November 27, there will be a related symposium in Sapporo Community Plaza with members of Side Project and special guests Marianne Hultman, Kjersti Solbakken and Berte Ynnesdal from Lofoten International Art Festival where we plan to present another version of IEIE next year.
PRESENTATION
THE INFLUENTOLOGY OF IMAGES: KENJI OZAWA
WHEN：September 30, 2023 WHERE：900 Auditorium, The University of Tokyo
SELOUT is curating the sixth seminar of influentology on September 30 at the 900 auditorium in Komaba campus, the University of Tokyo. The invited lecturer will be the renowned musician Kenji Ozawa, who will be talking about "The Influentology of Images". He will also be performing some songs, including a new one written especially for this occasion. This event is by application only (and only in Japanese), so please check out the following form if you are interested in participating.
PRESENTATION
IEIE, REFLECTED: PHASE 2: LOCATION HUNTING
WHEN：February 4-14, 2023 WHERE：Sapporo Cultural Arts Community Center
You Nakai will be co-curating an exhibition as part of the ongoing Side Project which explores the realizability of David Tudor's unrealized project Island Eye Island Ear in Hokkaido. This is the second show after the first one we presented last August, and it will focus on both the islands we have examined so far, as well as interviews conducted with scholars and hunters and artists who we met during our research as a series of side-effects of this endeavor.
You Nakai is delivering a lecture titled “Karmic Relationships, Accelerated: Influences & Incidents in India (and Beyond)” as part of the CTM Festival in Berlin. Here's abstract: "This talk surveys David Tudor’s long relationship with India, which culminated in his 1969 visit to Ahmedabad to establish the electronic music studio at the National Institute of Design, but was preceded by a strange history of exchanges and misunderstandings between Western mysticism and India, as well as succeeded by an equally strange history of consequences and byproducts that, among other things, might explain why I have been summoned to give this talk at CTM Festival today." Details are here.
PERFORMANCE
Tokyo Gen'On Project#18 ZOOMUSIC
WHEN：December 19, 2022 WHERE：ZOOM／Tokyo, Suginami Public Hall
You Nakai will be curating a concert of zoomusic as part of the "Critic's Selection" series by Tokyo Gen'on Project. We are planning to stage a double concert that happens online and offline simultaneously. For the offline version, taking place in Tokyo, I imagine it will be a bit like visiting a TV studio or a film set while they are shooting a program or a movie addressed primarily to people watching it on screen. So please make your choice and select which version you wish to experience. Details are here.
We are also putting out a call for zoomusic so please submit whatever ideas you may have!
PRESENTATION
Influentology seminars
WHEN：October 29, 2022-January 2023 WHERE：ZOOM
S.E.L.O.U.T. is curating a series of seminars focused on the topic of influence this fall. For the first round of seminars, we have selected a scientist of Agricultural Informatics ("the other AI") who will talk about the various meanings behind the seemingly singular acronym AI, an elderly gallery owner and a young fashion brand manager who will discuss the notion of "brand" and how to pass over influence across generations, a linguist studying fillers who will talk about his research while inevitably enacting the same fillers he attempts to theorize, a film scholar and an archivist sharing the same Chinese characters in their names, and a YouTuber who broadcasts her life in the countryside with the large bird Emu who will make a YouTube video of her visit to our lab.
You Nakai is joining a group presentation titled ARCHIVING POST-1960s MUSICS: FOUR EXPERIENCES OF ENGAGEMENT at the conference of American Musical Instrument Society.
PRESENT
UNDERTAKINGS, STUDIES & LaboUrs CURRENTLY conducted by S.E.L.O.U.T. with STUDENTS OR other people
INFLUENCE of influence
An archeology of the occult and convenient notion of influence which people use to explain relationships and effects that cannot be explained rationally. From influentia to influencers, via influenza and DUI. [COURSE]
A series of publications that serve as a platform for practical and theoretical research on the concept of "influence." Each issue in this series will focus on a specific theme from various perspectives through the optics of "influence."
A genealogical examination of the now-prevalent notion of performance, with a focus on the various forms of empiricism revolving around the lineage of pragmatism. [COURSE]
Exploring personal habits as a network of unconscious choreography set on each individual, and using mutual reflection between participants to discover dance by way of subtraction. [COURSE]
An experimental class where non-music major students learn the real history and theory and practice of experimental music, and attempt to imagine and fabricate a pseudo-history and theory and practice of experimental music that could have been but was not. Scheduled to go on for twenty or so years. [COURSE]
A series of pedagogical exercises to make music that can only be performed and experienced over zoom, partially to overcome the reluctance of teaching experimental music during COVID-19. [COURSE]
Long term collaborative project based in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan, to explore the realizability of David Tudor's unrealized project Island Eye Island Ear along with the side effects of such an exploration.
An effort to publish the documentation of 9 Evenings (1966), using the manuscript of a book that was planned yet abandoned in the aftermath of the event, while also reflecting on the passing of time since then to conceive a documentation twice removed.
You Nakai is currently working on a translation of Investigative Aesthetics by Eyal Weizman and Matthew Fuller, as well as other publications related to Forensic Architecture.
Various projects concerning David Tudor are in development, including a festival of Tudor's music in Berlin (July 2022), plans for setting a David Tudor Lab in Istanbul, etc.
Extending the idea of bias in analog electronics to make a circuit function properly, materials for realizing a performance are theorized from the negative standpoint of constraint.
REMINDED BY THE INSTRUMENTS: DAVID TUDOR'S MUSIC [2021.3]
This is a book on what a musician named David Tudor did, along with how and why he did them. And it is also sometimes about what he might have been thinking when he did certain things. The way I go about doing this is by connecting many materials that Tudor left behind as if they were pieces of a giant puzzle. So the important thing is that whole picture emerges from within that process, as a by-product or a side effect almost, and that’s why it feels like a bit of a cheat to give away a quick overview to people who have not read it. The most exciting things, at least as far as I’m concerned, are in the specific processes of solving one puzzle after another, and not so much in the philosophy or theory that might show up in the end. In that sense, maybe it’s a bit like a performance, which might be quite fitting for a book on Tudor.
SOUNDING THE PERIPHERIES [2021.7]
I wrote a new essay titled “Sounding the Peripheries” for the catalog of the exhibition Teasing Chaos: David Tudor at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. Through a detailed analysis of Soundings: Ocean Diary (1994), Tudor’s contribution to Ocean, his last collaborative project with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, the essay probes into one particular topic which I had deliberately left on the periphery of my argument in Reminded by the Instruments: the personal and artistic relationship between Tudor and Cage. Tudor’s idiosyncratic take on Cage’s approach to music is revealed, and a series of puzzling evidence documenting their long-time friendship is presented for others to solve.
ZOOMUSIC NO.1 [2021.7]
The first concert of zoomusic by my students at the University of Tokyo.
MONOBIRDS: FROM AHMEDABAD TO XENON [2021.10]
In December 1969, David Tudor made a series of recordings at the Electronic Music Studio at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, using Moog Synthesizers that he himself had brought from the United States and installed there. Ten years later, on March 1, 1979, Tudor used one of these recordings, which he now called Monobird, as the primary source track for a recording session at the New York discotheque Xenon.
This album, released by TOPOS, includes two 33rpm vinyl records of these works and an essay by You Nakai, When David Tudor Went Disco, that provides an in-depth study of Tudor’s performance at Xenon and its relation to Monobird. Selected as BEST OF 2021 by soundohm
MIGRATION OF MONOBIRDS [2021.10]
I presented a talk as part of the Archives Public Programs of National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. The series examines the activities of Experiments in Art & Technology in India in the 1960s and 70s.
My session focused on one particular recording David Tudor made during his stay at NID in late 1969 using the Moog Synthesizer he had installed in India’s first electronic music studio. Although Tudor personally disliked the Moog, after circumstances pushed him to perform with the instrument, he recorded what he did and subsequently used the same recording as a sound source in various performances across the 1970s. Analysis of recordings, photographs, diagrams, schematics, and recollections, revealed the unexpected trajectory of this recording he called Monobird, offering a thought or two about putting the archive to good use.
LATE REALIZATIONS [2022.1]
I wrote a new essay for the recent issue of the online journal ECHO, dedicated to the topic of feedback. It traces David Tudor’s use of feedback in relatively broad strokes, especially in relation to his collaboration with Gordon Mumma, focusing on the period between Bandoneon ! and Island Eye Island Ear, and connecting the argument to my own works with No Collective.
ZOOMUSIC NO.2 [2022.2]
The second concert of zoomusic by my students at the University of Tokyo
SIDE PROJECT LAUNCH DISCUSSION [2022.2]
We had our first launch-up conference of Side Project on February 13, 2022. I gave a talk on Island Eye Island Ear. Unfortunately, the whole thing was in Japanese due to budget constraints, but here's a video if you want to try.
REMINDED BY "REMINDED BY THE INSTRUMENTS" [2022.3]
I was invited to discuss Reminded by the Instruments by RISME, a study group on electronic music within the Italian Musicological Society. I mostly answered questions and talked about things I wrote about and things I did not.
NEW REVIEWS OF REMINDED BY THE INSTRUMENTS [2022.6]
Two lengthy and very insightful reviews of Reminded by the Instruments have appeared recently. One was written by Ezra J. Teboul in English and is published in the Computer Music Journal (MIT Press); The other was written by Jozef Cseres in Czech and is published in the online journal His Voice (Part I and II).
ZOOMUSIC | ToKYO GEN'ON PROJECT [2022.12]
The final ZOOMUSIC concert performed in collaboration with Tokyo Gen'On Project, presented online and offline simultaneously, with new pieces by composers including Doug G. Barrett, Jenn Kirby and Varun Kishore.
KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS, ACCELERATED [2023.2]
Online lecture given by You Nakai as part of the CTM Festival in Berlin, surveying David Tudor’s long relationship to India, which culminated in his 1969 visit to Ahmedabad to establish the electronic music studio at the National Institute of Design, but was preceded by a strange history of exchanges and misunderstandings between Western mysticism and India, as well as succeeded by an equally strange history of consequences and byproducts that, among other things, might explain why You was summoned to give this talk at CTM Festival.
IEIE, REFLECTED, REFLECTED [2024.9]
I wrote a new essay for the recent issue of the online journal METODE which reflects on the multi-year endeavor to realize David Tudor's unfinished project Island Eye Island Ear, originally conceived fifty years ago. The article is composed as an assemblage of seven stories, each of which, due to their relative coherence, could be regarded as islands of narrative, thus forming together a virtual archipelago.
REMEMBRANCES OF THINGS PAST, NO.2 [2024.9]
You Nakai gave a keynote lecture at the Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium held at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. The abstract read as follows:
Once upon a time, in the not-so-distant land of experimental music, lived a wizard named David Tudor, who spent his life conjuring sounds out of chaos. One of his last great adventures involved a quirky, custom-built synthesizer equipped with a neural network chip——a bit like giving a drum machine a brain, but one that kept interrupting with, “Actually, I think this beat could use a little more structure.”
Tudor, who had spent his career surfing the waves of musical unpredictability, suddenly found himself in a showdown with this overachieving machine, which was obsessed with finding patterns where Tudor preferred glorious, unhinged randomness. The result? A wild series of performances called Neural Synthesis, where man and machine waged a battle of wills.
Now, as I “restage” this story for you (for the second time, actually), I’ll explore not just what happened, but how revisiting these kinds of weird, wonderful moments can mess with our understanding of the present. After all, who says technology gets the last word in creativity? Maybe, just maybe, the best way to expand our thinking about sound synthesis is to embrace the fact that even the most advanced machine can’t predict the delightful absurdity of human creativity.
