Kenji Kojima's Biography
Kenji Kojima is a digital artist. He has been experimenting with the relationships between perception and cognition, technology, music, and visual art since the early 1990s. Primarily he has interested in the relationship between seeing and hearing. He was born in Japan and moved to New York in 1980. He painted egg tempera paintings that were medieval art materials and techniques for the first 10 years in New York City. His paintings were collected by Citibank, Hess Oil, and others. The personal computer improved rapidly during the 1980s. He felt more comfortable with computer art than paintings. He switched His artwork to digital in the early 1990s. His early digital works were archived in the New Museum - Rhizome, New York. He developed the computer software "RGB MusicLab" in 2007 and created an interdisciplinary work exploring the relationship between images and music. He developed interactive software for his artwork, but it happened a big problem, the software did not work on OS soon. He turned his artwork into a video while it worked. He programmed the software “Luce” for the “Techno Synesthesia” project in 2014. His digital art series was exhibited in New York, at media art festivals worldwide, including Europe, Brazil, the Middle East, and Asia, and the online exhibitions by ACM SIGGRAPH and FILE, etc. Anti-nuclear artwork “Composition FUKUSHIMA 2011” was collected in CTF Collective Trauma Film Collections / ArtvideoKoeln in 2015. After Covid-19, he could not go out to shoot a video. LiveCode programmer. Resume Digital Art Exibitions:
the USA: 2023, 2020 Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles, USA. / 2023 THE ELASTIC MIND, BROWARD College, Weston, Florida. / 2023 SOJOURNER, New York, NY. / 2022 Asian American International Film Festival, New York, NY. / 2012, 2016 Light Year, Brooklyn, New York. / 2021 UNCG International Sustainability Shorts Film Competition, UNC Greensboro, NC, USA. / 2019 The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery, New jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ. / 2019, 2016, 2015 Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, New York, NY. / 2018 The Exchange, Bloomsburg, PA. 2018 WhiteBox, New York, NY. / 2015 ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community. / 2014 MediaNoche, New York, NY. / 2008 AC Institute, New York, NY.
Europe: 2023, 2022, 2020, 2019 Ie Rencontres Internationales Traverse, Toulouse, France. / 2021 FEX comtemporary media art, Cologne, Germany. / 2020 Institut für Alles Mögliche, Stützpunkt Teufelsberg, Belrin, Germany. / 2019 The festival BINNAR, Vila Nova de Famalicão, Portugal. / 2019 MADATAC X New Media Arts Festival, Madrid, Spain. / 2018 Athens Digital Arts Festival, Athen, Greece. / 2018 Mitte Media Festival, Berlin, Germany. / 2017 Simultan Festival, Timisoara, Romania. / 2016 Simultan Festival, Timisoara, Romania. / 2016 Brave New World Beyond the Wall, Berlin, Germany. / 2015, 2013 ESPACIO ENTER, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. / 2014 BRAVE NEW WORLD, Berlin, Germany. / 2011 Jyväskylä Art Museum, Jyväskylä, Finland. / 2010 PROCESS Festival, Berlin, Germany. / 2009 RE-NEW Digital Art Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark. / 2002 Free Manifest, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. 2023, 2022, 2020, 2016, 2012, 2011, 2010 FILE (Electronic Language International Festival) São Paulo, Brazil. / 2012 FILE RIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. / 2010 FAD (Festival de Arte Digital), Belo Horizonte, Brazil. the Middle East: 2020, 2012 Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, Turkey. / 2020, 2019 Paadmaan Video Event, Isfahan, Iran. Asia: 2021 Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium, Bangkok, Thailand. / 2020 the 150th Anniversary Gandhi Event, Kolkata, India. / 2019 Capital Normal University College of Cape Cod, Beijing, China & China University of Mining
and Technology Yinchuan College, Yinchuan, China. / 2018 Gunung Sunda Festival, Sukabumi, West Java, Indonesia. / 2016 CeC 2016, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India. / 2010 Contemporary International New Media Art Invitational, Wuhan University of Technology, China.
Artist Statement
I have been thinking the sense of visual and audio has strong connections. Some people believe the painter Wassily Kandinsky was a synesthesia artist. But I have a suspicion whether he had synesthesia abilities or not. Artistic intuition is important, but the ability of synesthesia is too uncertain. Despite that, I thought the sense of vision and the sense of hearing might have common areas. A composer Alexander Scriabin tried another way. He composed the symphony "Prometheus: Poem of Fire" in 1910. He imagined a symphony of sound combined with a symphony of light. He made his system which was the 12-color circle. The top of the color circle was Red and C. Each color was assigned to 12 keys. The idea was based on Isaac Newton's color wheel. He wrote the light (luce) part of the score by musical notations in the symphony. However, his vision did not realize the technological limits of his own time. 100 years later, the performance of his work was realized by recent technologies. Composer Scriabin explored the common information of visual and auditory with the art of different expressions.
I was more interested in Scriabin's method than in using intuition for synesthesia art. We can use computer technology in the 21st century. I developed an algorithmic composition program "RGB MusicLab" in 2007 that converted computer color data to 12-tone notes. The color value 120 is the middle C on a musical scale. Also, I found binary is a new art material. The current project "Techno Synesthesia" is based on RGB Music technology.
A cyborg is a radical evolution of physical extension that uses science and technology in the 21st century. We have evolved extremely slowly to recognize the surrounding environment through sensory organs such as visual, auditory, tactile, and others, and realize them as reality. However, we do not know how we perceive our environment, the boundaries of sensory information, and how we handle them and choose our actions. What was the difference between humans and deep-sea creatures that have evolved to distinguish information from the outside world? The project "Techno Synesthesia" inherits the predecessors and experiments with the fusion and compatibility of multiple sensory organs by computer technology.
Art in the 21st century is no longer
about what to paint or what to create,
but about expressing the vector in which
the medium is heading. Everything else
that has been created in the 21st century
that we have called art should be called
craft or interior design.
"Stop, Caution, Walk" by Kenji Kojima
Egg Tempera, Gold Leaf on Panel. 10x10" Triptych, 1980 Kenji's Egg Tempera Paintings 1980-2004
I started my artist career in 1980 as a contemporary egg tempera artist.
A personal computer was improved rapidly during the '80s.
I felt digital art was more comfortable and clean.
I switched my artwork to digital in the early '90s.
Now I am interested in how we perceive the outside world
more than constructing physical art.
2024
Exhibitions & Media Art Festivals
Noh Dance Prelude by Uemura Shoen
"Oto Zono" Electro-Acoustic Sound Festival + Visuals
at HEART, SOHO, New York
November 30 & December 1, 2024,
Online Press Photos & Read Headlines / 4:30
Participating in the Anti-Nuclear Art Exhibition
March 11 - May 25, 2024
at Rabbit House 41 Essex St. New York
New Projects in 2024
Project / Bitwise Splitting and Merging of Pixels
Decode(Chaos) Portraits by Leonardo da Vinci
Project / Bitwise Splitting and Merging of Pixels
Uemura Shoen
Noh Dance Prelude / Mother and Child
This Planet is Our Home.
PIKA DON
Project / Bitwise Splitting and Merging of Pixels
Encryption by Music Key
Da Vinci Code / Ginevra de' Benci
Da Vinci Code / Mona Lisa
Da Vinci Code / The Lady with an Ermine
The Rockets Make the Planet Cry
with Subtitles in Five Languages
This Planet is Our Home.
24 Languages
Project 2024 - 2023
Bitwise Splitting and Merging of Pixels
時間系不定時報
JIKANKEI “FUJYO JIHOU” 2002 - 2012
The Sun goes around on Spaceship Earth.
JIKANKEI is a software art. It displays angles of the Sun
and local times of cities and places on the Earth.