Kenta Tanaka

Kenta Tanaka
Born in Tokyo in 1993. He is a guitarist, sound artist and urban composer.
By applying urban theory to music/sound art production, he seeks to establish an "Urban Composition" that weaves sounds around the theme of the city. His work unravels the relationship between human beings and environmental sounds in the city through phenomenological listening. His solo exhibition "Urban Reminiscence - Sound, Object, and Rhythm" (Sta., Tokyo, 2020) is a sound installation that recalls the memory of the city. Other solo exhibitions include "Urban Rhythmability" at TOKYO culture research, Roppongi, Tokyo (2020) and "Algorithmic Urban Composition" at the Computer Music and Acoustics Research Facility, Stanford University, Listening Room (2019). He is also involved in a wide range of other sound and music-related activities, including providing music for fashion, dance and video works.

About cities and music

1.
Listen to the city. Is it the noise, the sound or the music?

2.
To listen to the city is to listen to a part of the total direct and conceptual experience of the people and things involved in the city, and no one listener can hear the whole city at once.

3.
To place sound in the city is to integrate it into everyday space as a modest intervention in the city. It is to leave in the city an uncertain promise that may or may not be heard.

4.
The music of the city has no substance, it is the sum of the sounds that we hear as we walk through the city, the memories and sound images that our sensory organs unconsciously recall, and the relationships between all of these that make up the music of the city.

5.
Just as the experience of the city is subjective, the experience of sound differs from person to person and is also context-dependent. Depending on the context in which one listens, sound can have very different effects on people.

6.
The city itself is ever-generating environmental music.

7.
The city and music are two complex systems of the same nature, and just as it is impossible for one city dweller to understand everything about the city, it is impossible for one listener to hear everything about the city at once. Both the city and the music are experienced very differently depending on the context in which they are experienced. As the subject and the object of the experience change, the city and the music are reborn each time.

8. Try to parallel the sounds of several cities. The rhythms of each are intertwined. Sometimes they resonate, sometimes they are dissonant. The noise becomes a sound, accidental music. And then back to noise again. The city is always looking for the moment to become music.

Kenta Tanaka
July 4th, 2020, First Edition