Since our student time, Me and my friends always played with sounds, like disassembling cassette tapes for reverse plays or making binaural mikes at the head of mannequins. I always found recording in specific places interesting, it felt as if I cut the moments out to bring back home. I still feel the same. I gradually connected recordings with those of vending　machines at night, or the sound in manholes and to fine arts which I was pursuing at that time.

Wrk began just 10 years ago when Minoru Sato, my co-producer, came to my exhibition and exchanged common ideas. It was the time when interactive works, using Macs, started being established and all sound art was observed as only a part of media art. I knew very well that other artists and those who followed the scenes were trying hard in my fine arts university, but I always felt futile and ineffective towards those trendy art scenes. So I decided to produce something with a more solid concept. "consideration to phenomena as shift/passage in time-space and to reception/perception of the phenomena" is our idea. Wrk moves at its own pace as it is not only for CD production but also for exhibition.

I don't perform live because my work is mainly based on recordings.. there is not much ideas to play in spaces like venues. I will try my best though from now on. I have actually done a performance and an exhibition in Melbourne in August. I don't have a web site, but this again will change as I am hoping to put some of my works on the internet.

After listening to my cds, the label owners normally contact me via emails. I don't approach anyone from my side. Hapna contacted me by handwritten letter at first! I met Hamish from Naturestrip 3 years ago in Tokyo. My new work, 'Scenery of Decalcomania' is the illustration of decalcomania (an illustration that forms as a result of stained paintings between sheets of papers.) which demonstrates the inseparable relationship between the experience of perception and the target of perception.

To observe the incident at a place seems to take the objective view at one glance, but the experience itself is within the space. However alternatively the place exists within the experience of it. The theme is to reconsider incidents that way for a new perspective. Not only field recordings but it includes installation-like recordings so there are various kinds of production in it.

I specialized in oil paintings at university and remained in laboratory of materials and techniques. I still enjoy ancient paint works. The base of my creation comes from the practice of paints, so I consider what I do now as landscape paintings. I usually count on labels for art work as they have their own intention. I used photos I'd taken for the cds of Fringes, Sirr and Naturestrip. The cute Lucky Kitchen design made me laugh. I'm more careful about the explanatory sentences for the piece as it needs to be translated into long English sentences whereas it could be described in few beautiful Japanese letters.

It is probably understood when you listen to my pieces, I never intend to recreate the atmosphere of the places where the recording took place.

It is more for the sense of hearing with a prominent sense of materials. I try to make the documents of locales into something omnipresent as the abstract image of the physical world. When I started recording, I gave undivided attention to detailed phenomena. Then I noticed I could hear thick vibrations in subtle space and it didn’t feel that anything more should be added there. Recording sounds is just like a sketch and I keep moving without definite or solid ideas. Compiling a cd is like making an installation. Firstly there is a concept, then the explanations towards each track.. of course it limits the duration of time. Track are edited where more interesting points fully emerged.

I use contact mikes which were developed for medical equipment. I guess they were unwanted by doctors founding them sold as junk, so I bought up nearly everything left over the course of years. Its pre-amp is mounted onto piezo-ceramic disc and it has a very high sensitivity. I connect those to batteries and some other parts. Air mikes are found, though only the head parts, at professional device shops. They are very expensive and have good efficiency although their diameter is 3mm and their span is 20mm. Again those can not be used as they are, so some modifications are required to connect to the batteries. Recording is done onto portable DAT player with those two types of microphones. Because they are all tiny and light, set-up is pretty easy with clips and gaffa tapes. I don't really process the recorded sounds so I concentrate on searching the recording points.

Scientific description is inevitable when explaining about the incidents within the physical space. However this is a method used to testify greater crowds for authenticity. Scientific views are based on objective theories. My work deals with the perceptive experiences itself so there's nothing to insist from that point of view. One of my friends told me that my work is scientific in a way because I always produce with some kind of paradigm on assumption.

I'll give you some examples. During my university years, I monitored the details of city sounds through headphones connected to a micro mike on top of a thin pole over night. At dawn, I was putting the mike slowly into a car exhaust port and the sound of the bird that passed by over the head resonated and resounded. As the mike went deeply inside the port, the outside sounds were heard louder... I was trapped in the illusion that the world of inside and outside had inverted. this happened about 15 years ago, but it brought me the ideas for my present production.

The very little phenomena of vibrations are related with vast space. If a contact mike is set on a building wall, one can hear vibrations of far places and at the same time, one's consciousness of space stretches to that place. If the sound of a plane in the sky is heard, you can say that the consciousness of a mind was extended to that point of space. Also if the origin of the sound is the basis for the place, there is a little time difference from arriving there which you will realize the actual present time as a bundle of time differences. From those incidents, I began to think that it's possible to recognize the shapes of space from different aspects rather than general ideas nor objective views.

Hearing an incident as music is a matter of cultural backgrounds. That's also interesting but I never expect on it. In my CD on Sirr, there's a moment where a sound of trumpet practicing comes in at the warehouse, but that is not on purpose. It was recorded in an echoing environment like a cliff. and I think it gave good accent. My aim isn't to recreate the places exactly but if you put effects on, it would reduce the meanings of the interests in physical vibrations.

When listen with ears, the sounds of a tunnel reverberation effect and the actual sounds are nearly the same, but when you use a precise gate device, the amplitude was so different from the other. Actually in the micro-level, there's a pulse-like random vibrations going on during the amplitude comparing to effectors that just draws simple smooth slopes. This is the reflection of the physical shape in space. The level of my CDs are low in general but that's because it includes the frequencies that are usually cut off on normal CDs. maybe it's a bit reckless in terms of audio since I don't use editing softwares etc, and I just use the recording as it is. You can understand the nuance when headphones are used. As an exception, I equalize and cut specific frequencies when i wish to focus more on particular points. Or there are cases where I process the piece with creative intentions, like track 1 and 7 of Naturestrip.

There is a red can of bonds for dilution on the desk where I'm writing this now. On the wall here at the back, there are nails from a hundred years ago that I collected from ruins of monastery in Greece. There are stains of raindrops on windows.These are the elements that structures the space of my room but it's difficult to find the relationship between them.But other people can also observe the same things here in this place. If the connection between these three were related to constellations, you may say that other people from different places are seeing the same constellations. Since you are facing the phenomena of the actual physical world, you can freely connect or separate any kind of interpretations to it without failing into the preconceived ideas. I thought I have perceived this but (and laughs) I prolonged the diagram of causality of reason and result, and the confrontation of objectivity and subjectivity to a perceptive experience. Having written, it is still a vague argument, but my work would not change so suddenly.

My theme on the new cd that I'll be producing during this year for Hapna is the eyesight of Chameleons. Wrk exhibition starts in November in 2004 at Arts-apolia in Osaka. A short live performance is organized for that. Also there will be a split LP from Stichting Mixer in Netherlands. There will be some compilations and collaboration works too.

Experimental music like what Plop distributes are delicate and have high quality so it requires listeners the timing to hear it. i mostly enjoy rock music from the 60's and the 70's at home. It might sound funny but I love those kinds of works. Recently, I listen to many materials which i got from a painter called Phil Edwards who I've met in Melborne and "room with sky" by John Hudak, switching them around with Monster Magnet, Rata Blanca.