Keiko Uenishi

Raised in big cities, I have always been wondering how our ways of thinking/feeling are getting affected by our relationship with sounds in the environments we live in. It had become a main focus of my study: the creation of environments and circumstances where sound is one key element. Sound is inseparable from its surroundings.

The same sound will be perceived completely differently if it were placed in a different situation. How people react to sounds? Those who were brought up in an apartment facing with busy traffic, would register certain sounds in the same manner as those who were brought up in a quiet village? Can the sound of a big truck passing, with rattling beer bottles, be someone’s comfort?

With this project Iaimed to experiment with non-language communications involving symbols (codes) and sounds in order to create a social/collective action as musical composition. Itenabled me to encounter people in Nodar with different language and culture background, to build(an) alternative mean(s) of communication.

Keiko Uenishi a.k.a. o.blaat is based in Brooklyn, New York and works as a sound artist, composer and core member of SHARE collective. She is known for creating various interactive audio environments resulting from her ceaseless pursuits of erasing the performer’s presence and ultimately altering listening situations. After performing with a unique, hand-made electronic “tapboard effector soundsystem” for several years, Keiko has been exploring the Powerbook’s mobility. Her performances and installations have appeared at many museums, clubs,galleries and festivals worldwide. Most recently, she completed a site-specific audio / light interactive installation, “Aboard:Fillip2” created for a cargo-container at Fortescue Avenue Gallery,London in July 2005.