Kazuya Nagaya & Ali M. Demirel & Maurice Jones^JP+TR+DE/CA

In 1999, after writing music for TV for several years, sound artist Kazuya Nagaya embarked on a personal search through the most fringe areas of Japanese rural tradition, such as oral traditions from villages on the verge of disappearing or the instruments and compositions used in ancient Buddhist ceremonies. This path led him to literature and to combine his experience in electronic media with the instruments discovered along the way, becoming one of the foremost ambient composers in contemporary Japan.

Ali M. Demirel broke into the video art circuit as director of clips and video sets of Richie Hawtin aka Plastikman. His background in nuclear engineering and architecture are a strong influence on his post-apocalyptic, anti-utopian imagery, which has evolved into interactive video, immersive installation, and large-format live performance. And although Ali is no longer dedicated to engineering and academia, his time at festivals such as CTM and Today's Art or spaces such as the Guggenheim in New York and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London leaves interesting lessons on how science, innovation and art can interact.

Maurice Jones is a curator, producer, and critical researcher on artificial intelligence. Maurice is studying for a doctorate, along with performing the artistic direction of MUTEK Japan and being part of the programmers of the Forum that takes place at MUTEK Montreal.

Iwakura, a piece developed for the dome format by Ali M. Demirel and Kazuya Nagaya, produced by Maurice Jones, uses technological and innovative processes to remind us that creativity and the sacred are, always, found in nature. Demirel and Nagaya take us on a meditative and poetic audiovisual immersion, inspired by Shintoism, which affirms deities and spirits can be found in rocks. Iwakura takes video footage collected from the spiritual region of Kumano, and Buddhist prayers soundscapes to evoke and invoke a profound ethereal experience through technology.

The realization of Iwakura is possible thanks to the support of round 9 of the International Cooperation Fund of the Goethe-Institute.

Kazuya Nagaya, sound artist and ambient producer, and Ali M. Demirel, visual creator and video artist, collaborate on a new large-format audiovisual piece. Produced by Maurice Jones.