School of Music Visiting Artist
Akiko Hatakeyama is a composer/performer of electroacoustic music and intermedia. She explores the boundaries between written music, improvisation, electronics, real-time computer-based interactivity, and visual media. Storytelling, memories, and nature play an important role in Akiko's work, and she most often finds beauty in simplicity.
Akiko's research focuses on realizing her ideas of relations between the body and mind into intermedia composition, often in conjunction with building customized instruments/interfaces. It is a form of nonverbal communication with her inner self and with the environment, including the audience. By somatically actuating perceptions with sound, light, and haptic objects, her ideas of relations between the body and mind become embraceable. Her exploration in embodying time - in the form of memories, emotions, and personal experiences - is realized. As a result, the exploration brings therapeutic effects. Sharing this special experience only achievable by creating and performing music is an important part of Akiko's research and teaching.
Akiko obtained her B.A. in music from Mills College and M.A. in Experimental Music/Composition at Wesleyan University and completing her Ph.D. at the MEME program at Brown University. She joined the Music Technology program at the University of Oregon as an assistant professor in 2016. Her instructors include Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, Ronald Kuivila, Maggi Payne, Chris Brown, Jim Moses, Todd Winkler, and Butch Rovan. Akiko is a founding member of OPENSIGNAL, a collective of artists concerned with the state of gender and race in experimental electronic-based sound and art practices.
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