Starting as a remote sharing of images and sounds between th UK and Japan, Ayatori has grown into a multi-faceted collaborative process, exploring diverse mediums and platforms - including live and recorded sound, photography, film, AI technology, and modern dance explorations.
From it's unexpected beginings during the 2020 lockdowns, the remote dialogue between composer and musician Ed Jones, photographer and videographer Yuriko Takagi, and En Rapport curators Keith Michael and Asako Taguchi, and the latest member, AI specialist Matthew Yee-King, has grown towards the fantastic opportunity of a two week residency at the Academy of Music and Theatre Arts (AMATA), Falmouth University, UK,.
Working face to face in real time will be exciting in itself. Yet there is an amazing chance to develope the excisting material across performance, installation and digital platforms, and further to research and develope the use of AI tech in the creation of immersive audio-visual environments. Also there will b several funded student internships in dance, music, and photography, alongside the residency.
The AMATA Residency is valuable, both in its opportunity and as a resource. The challenge is getting everything ready and everybody there to make it happen. There has been little time to set up all possible funding streams, which brings us to this crowdfunding platform. Actually this feels both challenging and exciting, and at the same time quite natural since collaboration is at the core of the Ayatori process, and to reach out and connect with interested people to help support this feels like another creative opportunity. Ayatori is the Japanese word for cats cradle - a web spun from a single thread - and the idea that this process can involve and connect people through involvment and experience feels both natural and wonderful.
While this event is essentially for research and development, rather than a production, the goal is to realise the multi-faceted applications of Ayatori with performance, installation and digital platforms. The next stage will involve public engagemet - there will of course be public-facing sharing of work-in-progress at the end of the residency on the 21 July.
We are seeking funding to cover gaps as a result of higher costs and a failed funding application to support travel and accomodation. The amount we are seeking is £6,000.
Anyone who contributes will have acces to a documentary film being made of the process by Falmouth University, Institute of Photography students, reports and insights from the process, and free access to any public-facing events or programmes in the future.
Apart from collaboration being key to the project, the setting up of eight paid internships has been set up students from Music, photography and dance courses to be involved in this exciting process. Also there will be field work exploring local environments, with sounds and images incorporated into new works during the residency.
Who's Involved...
Yuriko Takagi -Photographer and videographer
Ed Jones – Composer, musician
Dr Matthew Yee-King – AI technology;
Asako Taguchi - Ayatori Curator / musician, en rapport director
Keith Michael - Ayatori Curator / musician, en rapport artistic director
Yuriko Takagi - graduated Musashino Art University in Tokyo andthen fashion design at Trent Polytechnic in England. Worked as a freelance designer in Europe. Started taking photographic portraits as she journeyed throughout Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East, focusing on “human existence”. Her photos highlight the relationship between fashion and corporeality outside of standard high fashion settings, yet her work is in demand by designers like Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto, John Galliano, and recently Christian Dior.
https://yurikotakagi.com/about/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPvcttMgP3k
https://www.kyotographie.jp/en/programs/2023/yuriko-takagi/
https://en.gyre-omotesando.com/artandgallery/yurikotakagi-chaoscosmos-vol1/
Ed Jones – awarding winning Saxophonist /Composer Ed Jones has immersed himself in a rich and diverse range of jazz and improvised music. Working with a broad spectrum of jazz, R & B, and hip-hop legends, including George Benson, Horace Silver, Dianne Reeves, Dr Lonnie Smith, Jamie Cullum, Incognito, Us3, Tina Turner, Omar, D'Angelo. He has released several acclaimed albums and toured worldwide with his own projects playing an impressive range of styles from hard swinging jazz and experimental music, to funk and hip-hop. He has been the recipient of several composition commissions from BBC Jazz on 3 , London Jazz Festival, Southern Arts . Ed is currently Principal Lecturer on the Jazz and Popular Music programmes at Leeds Conservatoire.
“One of Europe’s most exciting and innovative bandleaders"- BBC Music Magazine
https://www.edjonesjazz.co.uk/
Dr Matthew Yee-King – is an academic in the department of computing, Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2013 he delivered the first English language MOOC on the Coursera platform, attracting an enrolment of 97,000. As the project manager for the €3m PRAISE research project, he managed the development and trialling of innovative education technology, including media annotation systems.
He is the CTO of Museifi, a spin out company that is innovating PRAISE technology into the marketplace. He has also carried out research into audio analysis and creative applications of machine learning, including a series of commissioned musical AI systems that have performed alongside human musicians on BBC national radio and at venues such as the Wellcome Collection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFmr_J-2GjM&t=198s
En Rapport – founded in 2018 by Keith Michael and Asako Taguchi, following on from an illness which curtailed the music activities of Asako Taguchi, to create opportunities for artistic and cultural exchange between artists from diverse artistic mediums and cultural backgrounds, En Rapport explores artistic dialogues where improvisation plays a part of the creative process. En Rapport is also interested in the way the experience of diverse artistic languages offer opportunity for non-verbal communication.
Projects so far (including five Anglo-Japanese projects shelved due to the pandemic in 2020) are events with UK pianist Kit Downes in Tokyo in 2018, and also with the No One’s an Island Trio with Emi Makabe and Thomas Morgan in England (including a workshop at the Royal Academy of Music in London) in 2022. Along with the Ayatori Residency, En Rapport is preparing events in Japan later this year with both of these projects as well as aiming to reignite the other projects in 2024.
En Rapport also runs more local jazz based projects in Cornwall, south-west England, including Jazz at the Poly, Falmouth, and the Falmouth Rapport Jazz Summer School.
Keith Michael – musician, producer and educator has worked in mixed media practices, branching out from being a jazz drummer to working as actor, writer and director with experimental theatre and visual arts projects and back to jazz and music education and producing, in the UK, Holland, Germany, and Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Japan, and back to the UK since 2010 as associate lecturer at Falmouth University, leader of the Falmouth Yamaha Jazz Summer School and Rapport Falmouth Jazz Summer School, musician, arranger and producer and co founder of En Rapport in 2018.
Asako Taguchi – singer since student band days at university, and own company CEO and family business director, began an intensive study as a jazz singer in London between 2008-2014 with leading UK and international vocalists Brigitte Beraha, Anitta Wardell and Emilia Martensson. This led to her being signed by UK jazz label 33 Jazz Records and the release of her first album Secrets Unfolding in 2015 (http://www.33jazz.com/). Following the cancellation of plans by En Rapport for multiple events alongside the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, due to the Pandemic, work is currently underway for the next events in Japan in November byNo One’s an Island Trio with Kit Downes, Emi Makabe and Thomas Morgan.
