ato.archives
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The latest cassette release from Tokyo‑based electronic musician and painter Akhira Sano. Evoking the stillness of late‑night hours and the lingering echoes of memory, it’s a work whose delicate details reveal themselves more and more with each listen.
An ambient work by Okinawa‑based musician and producer harikuyamaku, created for a resort hotel in Okinawa. The music captures the island’s atmosphere and quietude as if translating the very air and stillness of the land into sound.
A pure shakuhachi work by Katsuya Nonaka, a shakuhachi player and organic rice farmer whose deep relationship with nature forms the very foundation of his musical express
kishun is a duo: ISHIKAWA Ko, player of the shō (mouth-organ), and NAKAMURA Kahoru, player of the gaku-biwa (Japanese court lute). Since 2015 they have used only shō and biwa. Their idea is to bring out the hidden sound in what they call “gagaku without melody.”
Gagaku is the ancient court music of Japan. It is more than a thousand years old. In the Heian period, nobles gathered old songs and dances from Japan and pieces that had come from Korea and China between the 5th and 9th centuries, and shaped them into one art. As gagaku took root in Japan, it was arranged and rebuilt. The form we hear today is unique to Japan. By the Heian era, it was already close to its present shape. Gagaku lives in two worlds: as court music at the Imperial Palace, and as sacred music for rites and festivals at temples and shrines. Because of this history, it was kept by nobles and professional musicians, away from the taste of ordinary people. Its instruments and dances are very different from most other Japanese traditions.
Gagaku has four main kinds: bugaku (dances, including those from the continent), kangen (an instrumental ensemble), kuniburi-no-utamai (old songs and dances from Japan), and utamono (vocal music from the Heian period). Among these, kangen is rare in Japan: it is a full orchestra made only of instruments. Most other Japanese music centers on singing. When there is instrumental playing, it is often in small groups or as support for theater and dance. Kangen stands apart.
The kangen ensemble is called “three winds, two strings, three drums.” The winds are shō, hichiriki (double-reed), and ryūteki (transverse flute). The strings are biwa and so (zither). The drums are kakko, taiko, and shōko (gong). The hichiriki and ryūteki carry the melody. The shō wraps them in chords. The string parts frame the rhythm. Kishun plays only shō and biwa, both in classic pieces and in improvisation.
The shō is a free-reed mouth organ with 17 bamboo pipes of different lengths and pitches. Each pipe has a small metal reed. In the classic style, players do not use tonguing. They shape phrases with breath. The shō is not loud. In ensemble it plays long, steady chords called aitake. These chords color the melody and show the center of the mode (scale).
The gaku-biwa is a lute. Today it has four strings and four frets, and is played with a plectrum. Its back is flat and the body is shallow. Its sound is strong at the start, then fades quickly, with almost no ring. For this reason, the biwa speaks more in rhythm than in harmony.
kishun leaves out the melody instruments of kangen. They focus on the shō, which builds a field of sound through aitake chords, and the biwa, which draws the rhythm. This is their experiment: to bring forward the voices that hide behind the melody. With the skill of two masters, they reach this goal. Sounds that the full gagaku ensemble often covers without notice step into the foreground and speak to us in a fresh, striking way.
(*1) ISHIKAWA Ko — Studied shō and gagaku song with MIYATA Mayumi, BUNNO Hideaki, and SHIBA Sukeyasu. He began performing in 1990. He plays classic and new works with Reigakusha, a well-known gagaku group, and also performs as a soloist. He has taken part in many projects with artists such as SAKAMOTO Ryuichi and Evan Parker. He is also active in free improvisation.
(*2) NAKAMURA Kahoru — While at university, she met the revival of Bankaso (the oldest known biwa score, reconstructed by SHIBA Sukeyasu) and began to study gagaku. She studied ryūteki with Shiba Sukeyasu, and gaku-biwa and umai (right-dance, a style with roots in the Korean peninsula and northeast China) with YAMADA Kiyohiko. A member of Reigakusha, she has performed since 1990 at festivals in Japan and abroad, and as a soloist. She also works to bring lost classic pieces back to li
A work that crystallizes the delicate ambient and electronica that Maps and Diagrams excels at into a quiet homage to nature. Warm cassette‑tape textures blend with gently wavering electronic tones, creating a serene sonic world where wind and light seem to drift slowly through a forest.
Masahiro Sugaya began his career in the 1980s, working alongside the environmental music scene of that era while also making a significant impact in stage music through his involvement with Pappa TARAHUMARA.
Over the past 20 years, Sugaya has shifted from traditional composition using instrumental music to creating works for 8-channel multi-speaker systems, incorporating environmental sounds and field recordings. His latest album continues this evolution, featuring collages of environmental sounds within individual tracks. The album is structured to balance past and new works, creating a collage-like representation of Sugaya’s diverse creative output.
"しるしまみれ / Overflowing Signs" offers an experience that navigates freely between Sugaya’s environmental music approach and his practices in field recording and musique concrète, presenting a sequence of sounds that defies easy categorization or symbolism. Additionally, this album marks Sugaya’s first stereo full album release in nearly 20 years.
Having studied under Takehisa Kosugi in 1975 and participated in the legendary improvisation group East Bionic Symphonia, Tomonao Koshikawa—now also a member of Marginal Consort and an artist who performs experimental music, jazz, rock, Indian classical music, and even Kanze‑school Noh chanting—presents his second solo work, following his ato.archives debut Footprint
This compilation introduces the sound pieces created by the Latin American experimental filmmakers and
is curated by the film artist Tetsuya Maruyama.
Tetsuya Maruyama
Born in 1983 in Yokohama, Japan and currently based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Graduated from the University at Buffalo's School of Architecture in 2007 and from the Visual Language Department of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro's School of Fine Arts in 2024. His work spans film, text, performance, sound, ideas, and installation, without prioritizing any particular medium.
Maruyama’s practice is rooted in re-contextualizing ordinary elements and textures, presenting them as ephemeral records of everyday observations. As an independent programmer and researcher, he has curated screenings of Brazilian experimental cinema across the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, and Canada. He is also the founder of Megalab, an artist-run film lab based in Rio de Janeiro. His works are distributed by Light Cone, a nonprofit organization dedicated to experimental cinema in Paris.
Artist bio:
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Ж (São Paulo, 198-) film-designer, programmer, educator & editor
Has a non-specialised and situated practice that explores the energetic, material,economic, political, and emotional cycles of (semio)capitalism. His work uses various strategies, materials, and media to reveal how these forces shape perception,memory, and subjectivity, especially in the context of our current ecological crisis.
His artistic propositions have taken the form of films, video installations, counter-spaces, writings, performances, and public space interventions, all aimed at reintegrating artistic practice into specific social and political contexts.
John Melo:
Visual artist, designer, and teacher of audiovisual arts. Graduated from the MAE (Master's in Technology and Aesthetics of Electronic Arts) at the National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF), Argentina. Interested in the relationship between arts, technology, ancestry, and transdisciplinary and experimental work. Studies non-linearity in artistic creation processes, poetic thinking, magical thinking, spirituality, and political and social actions, with a deep interest in pedagogy. Their work combines creative languages such as installation, sculpture, illustration, writing, sound, and video primarily. Previously a tutor in the training program for self-taught artists at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá (MAMBO PFA)
In 2022, founded SEPAE (Seminar of Editing and Experimental Audiovisual Thinking). Also involved in"Colectivo Tal Cosa," a transdisciplinary project combining biology, sound
exploration, intuition, and non-linear thinking in creative processes. A member of "2 horas de diferencia coletivo," a space connecting Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia for projects that conceptually link the three territories. Part of the art collective "Blanco Conejo" in Bogotá, aiming to share, promote, and experiment with contemporary
modes of creation.
Rodrigo Faustini:
Rodrigo Faustini is a Brazilian artist and researcher, based in São Paulo/ Campinas. His practice focuses on mediation, materiality and noise in audiovisual forms. His work has been exhibited at Centro Cultural Kirchner, Images Festival, Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, Annecy international animation festival, Vienna Shorts, Festival de Cine de la Habana, and others.
Francisco Álvarez Ríos:
Francisco Álvarez Ríos (1991 - Ecuador) is a filmmaker, curator, archivist, and visual and sound artist. He currently serves as the director and curator of the Festival Internacional de Cine Contemporáneo Cámara Lúcida
As a filmmaker, he explores reality and its escapes, focusing on the demystification of the image beyond the literal recording of the real. His current practice delves into moving images, sound interpretation, film installation, and performance film—practices that coexist and interact within the less-defined territory of the contemporary expanded cinema.
Martín Baus:
Multimedia artist, filmmaker, musician, researcher and teacher. My artistic practice investigates the relationships between history, materialism and perception, converging my interest in the political dimensions of listening, the reappropriation of archives, and the procedures of translation between materialities such as celluloid,sound and text. I’m a member of CEIS8, a collective for experimentation with film formats and photochemical processes based in Santiago de Chile, and co-director along with Andrés Baus, of the independent record label Radio Fome, which releases improvisation-based music and sound pieces. I’m interested in aurality as a tool for a radical pedagogy from Latin America, as well as methodology for artistic and practice-based research.
I enjoy engaging with the sonic realm from non-audible or non-sonorous approaches, therefore, I’ve done poetry books related to listening and wording, text installations that engage with opaque language translation procedures, publications around the links between salsa rhythms, migration and working-class struggles, and fictional writings that speculate on the future of sound archives and digital archeology.
Lucía Malandro:
Lucía Malandro is a renowned Uruguayan filmmaker dedicated to the preservation and restoration of cinematic and photographic heritage.
A graduate of the Escuela de Cine y Televisión de San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, with a specialization in Documentary Directing, she continued her studies with a master’s degree at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. As the founder of the Archivistas Salvajes collective, Malandro has taken initiative to rescue a little-known legacy: Cuba’s underground cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, a clandestine movement that emerged on Havana’s rooftops in response to official restrictions.
Since 2019, she has directed several short films focused on the reuse and revaluation of cinematic and photographic archives, earning recognition at prestigious international festivals. Additionally, she has contributed as a film critic to various publications, including the official newspaper of the San Sebastián Film Festival in 2023.
Malandro has worked on the restoration of archives at the Cinemateca Portuguesa and has contributed to research and archival projects such as Piezas Cinéticas and Vanguardia Scópica, collaborating with institutions like Gordailua, the Basque Film
Ivonne Sheen Mogollón:
My projects are developed as experimental audiovisual, photographic and sound works, publications, texts, curatorial work and organization of cultural initiatives. From a personal and critical voice, I explore questions and reinterpretations about my surroundings, structures, archive images, my family history and the hegemonic learning that we assimilate. I am interested in self-management and the collective creation of spaces and experiences. I currently live in between Cologne, Germany, and Lima, Peru. My film Animal Within co-directed with Rebeca Alvan has been showcased in different platforms and festivals in Latin America, Europe and the USA. I am co founder of Taller Helios and associate collaborator of Isole_islas.
Javier Plano:
Javier Plano is an artist and university professor that works and lives in Buenos Aires. He has a college degree in Electronic Arts from UNTREF, where since 2014 he has been teaching courses about time based media and audiovisual performance arts. He’s currently doing a master’s degree in Sound Art at UNTREF. In 2007, he begins to produce video works and installations, participating in various festivals and exhibitions organized by institutions locally and abroad. He has received numerous distinctions for his works, among others an honorable mention in the MAMbA / Fundación Telefónica Award for Arts and New Technologies, the 3rd prize in the UNTREF award to the Electronics Arts, and three different honorable mentions at the National Salon of Visual Arts. On 2016, he has his first solo exhibition, titled "Test Patterns", in the MACLA (La Plata, Argentina). That same year he attends an artistic residence program on Signal Culture (NY, USA), with a scholarship granted by the Department of Cultural Affairs of Argentina. In 2019, he does his first solo exhibition in Buenos Aires at the Eduardo Sívori Museum, and wins a Scholarship of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes to develop a new project.
Pablo Mazzolo:
Pablo Mazzolo (Argentina) is a filmmaker and educator born in Buenos Aires in 1976. He works exclusively in analogue film formats exploring the optical and chemical properties of the medium, with a particular focus on human and natural landscapes. His work has tackled themes such as indigenous sovereignty, the spectre of military dictatorship, extinction and environmental catastrophe.
He received an MFA from the University of Buenos Aires (2001). His films, including Diego La Silla (2000), Oaxaca Tohoku (2011), El Quilpo sueña cataratas (2012), Fotooxidación (2013), and Ceniza Verde (2019), have been widely exhibited at festivals, museums, and galleries internationally, including Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Melbourne International Film Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Block Museum of Art, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Anthology Film Archives, Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Brooklyn Museum, The Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art, TIFF Wavelength, International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Punto de Vista Festival, Frontera Sur International Non-Fiction Festival, Museo Tamayo, Valdivia International Film Festival, FAMU International, The Latin American Museum of Art Buenos Aires, Chicago Underground Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, The Friedl Kubelka School for Independent Film, (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico, and Cinemateca Madrid, among many others.
His film Conjectures (2013) won Grand Prize, Media City Film Festival (2013); Fish Point (2015) was awarded the Kodak Cinematic Vision Award, Ann Arbor Film Festival (2016); and Cineza Verda (2019) was awarded Grand Prize, Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (2019). Mazzolo is Professor at the National University of Quilmes, works as a freelance documentary film editor, and teaches workshops on visual perception and image creation to young people living with autism. He lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Rosana Cacciotore:
Experimental filmmaker, documentary filmmaker, photographer, teacher, and
audiovisual researcher. Graduated in social communication with a master's and a PhD degree (thesis defense) in literary theory from UFSC/BR. She has taught film and visual poetics courses, had films screened in national and international festivals, and participated as a debater, curator, judge, and reviewer in festivals, shows, and film notices. She has a book and articles published.
In experimental work, I usually make the sound myself; I think it is part of the creation process. About sound in these works, I assume sound is an image that produces meaning (or sensation) as a sign independent of the image.
Excerpt from the text on the sleeve: Connecting cables, turning knobs, and capturing the fleeting modulations and articulations that emerge in each passing moment—this is a practice shaped as much by intention as by surrender. Sometimes you build sound with careful deliberation; other times, you simply let yourself drift and see where the current leads. Among the many ways one can engage with music today, modular synthesis is certainly not the most accessible. And yet, those who are drawn to this instrument around the world are, I feel, explorers who find meaning not only in the destination, but also in the journey of seeking a sound that belongs to them alone. By Yumi Iwaki (curator of the project)
