Bio

Atau Tanaka holds the Chair of Digital Media at Newcastle University, and is Director of Culture Lab. He has conducted research at IRCAM (Centre Pompidou), has been Artistic Ambassador for Apple France, and was the first artist to become researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) Paris.

Atau’s first inspirations came upon meeting John Cage during his Norton Lectures at Harvard. He moved to Europe in the 90’s and formed Sensorband with Zbigniew Karkowski and Edwin van der Heide. He then moved to Japan and came in contact with the noise music scene, playing with Merzbow, Otomo, KK Null and others. In Tokyo he was artist in residence at NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC), and visiting professor at Keio University SFC.

He helped to establish the conference, New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). His research in this area covers biosignal interfaces, networked performance, and mobile locative media. With the democratization of these technologies, he looks at the societal impact of creative practice with digital media in major projects for the Research Councils UK (RCUK) Digital Economy Hub, Social Inclusion through the Digital Economy (SiDE).

Atau has released solo, group, and compilation recordings on labels such as Sub Rosa, Bip-hop, Caipirinha Music, Touch/Ash, Sonoris, Sirr-ecords. His work has been presented at Ars Electronica, SFMOMA, Eyebeam, V2, ZKM, and has received support from the Fondation Daniel Langlois. He was Artistic Co-Director of the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) and mentor at the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA, UK).