Collaboration of SAKAMOTO + TAKATANI Takatani Shiro was responsible for image supervision of "LIFE" (performed in Tokyo and Osaka), an opera by Sakamoto Ryuichi who tried to present an overview of music and society of the 20th century in 1999. In June 2005, a live performance,"Garden Series vol. 1: Experimental Live at Honen-in Zen Temple" in Kyoto, was conducted through laptops and images, fronting a garden of the Buddhist abbot's quarters. In June of the same year, Sakamoto and Takatani collaborated again in a Susan Sontag memorial live performance at Kyoto Zokei University. The images, in which Sontag's portraits and punctuation marks in her texts are arranged, are combined with sounds in a collage style, with various sounds dubbed onto "Spiegel im Spiegel" by Arvo Pärt. "LIFE--fluid, invisible, inaudible ..." was produced as a commissioned work at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), and exhibited from March 10 to May 28 2007. On July 5 "Garden Series vol. 2", a live performance consisted of laptop-based sound and installation was held at in Daitokuji subtemple Yotokuin. SAKAMOTO Ryuichi Award-winning composer and musician Sakamoto Ryuichi has made a career of crossing musical and technological boundaries. Sakamoto has experimented with, and excelled in, many different musical styles, making a name for himself in popular, orchestral and film music. A founding member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), Sakamoto has composed original scores for 19 major and independent films, including: Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Last Emperor, and most recently, SILK (currently in post-production, scheduled to be released Fall 2007 in North America). Sakamoto was awarded both the Academy Award and Grammy for The Last Emperor score. In 2005, Sakamoto managed to simultaneously return to his electropop roots and maintain his classical influences with a fusion of many musical styles on his solo project, Chasm. Chasm was re-interpreted by fourteen of electronic music's top artists on the release Bricolages. In 2006, Sakamoto continued his collaboration with Alva Noto with the second European Tour and the first Asian Tour in support of their releases Vrioon, Insen, and Revep. Sakamoto revisits his partnership with Christian Fennesz with the 2007 release of their debut full length album, Cendre. In October a new work, Ocean Fire by Sakamoto and Christopher Willits will be released. Also in November, the premiere of a new collaboration with Carsten Nicolai, commissioned by the city of Manheim, Germany is slated. For further information visit www.sitesakamoto.com TAKATANI Shiro Born in 1963. Graduated from Environmental design - Art Dept. of Kyoto City University of Arts. Joined dumb type as one of the founders in 1984, and has been involved especially in the visual and technical aspects. In his solo activities, Takatani participated in a municipal project of Groningen, Holland (artistic director: Daniel Libeskind), in collaboration with Asada Akira in 1990. Takatani created images for the collaboration concert Dangerous Visions with Art Zoyd and the National Orchestra of Lille in March 1998. He did visual direction for the Sakamoto Ryuichi's opera "LIFE" September 1999. And he released solo video installation work "frost frames" 1998, "optical flat" 2000. Also, He created the video installation piece IRIS collaborated with Nakaya Fujiko, a fog sculptor, for the Valencia Biennial in 2001. Commissioned by the Natural History Museum of Latvia in Riga, for the exhibition "Conversations with Snow and Ice", his installation was presented in November-December 2005, as part of a retrospective of the works of the snow and ice scientist Nakaya Ukichiro (1900-1962). In 2006, under the auspices of the Japan Foundation's 2006 Australia-Japan Exchange Project "Rapt! 20 contemporary artists from Japan", selected for a one-month artist residency in Australia and exhibit in Melbourne. In June of 2007, a solo exhibition, "photo-gene" at the Kodama Gallery in Tokyo.