Ujino Muneteru: Ujino and The Rotators
Photo credit: Masanori Ikeda
Photo credit: Masanori Ikeda
In fact Ujino is the only artist in the Rotators and the other members of the band are consisting of “objects” operated by motors. Ujino uses as his main sound source “standard motorized electrical appliances (hairdryers, drills, etc) the names of which are more or less the same all around the world. Ujino creates interfaces using the kind of DJ turntable available in any city and secondhand copies of mass-produced pop records. Other than these, the objects he uses are all familiar secondhand (not vintage) household items purchased locally, such as automobiles, furniture, toys, and lighting apparatuses. When he incorporates all these things together he ends up with something that’s both an automatically playing sound sculpture and a musical instrument that can be played manually.
Ujino also has said that “I set up the band on the table and control everything from the Rotatorhead, so it ends up looking like a cooking show on TV. The permanent members of The Rotators are: the blender, for its heavy, low frequency sounds — like a punchy kick drum; the drill, set up too for its snappy, tight snare drum sound; and the hair dryer, which is always involved with my performances because it resembles a fuzzy bass but sometimes takes the role of vocals.”
Ujino Muneteru (Japan)
The renowned Japanese sculptor and musician Ujino Muneteru (born Tokyo, 1964) founded The Rotators in 2004, a band whose members consist of ordinary household appliances, including blenders, hairdryers and power tools. While Ujino’s work recalls both the Intonarumori (noise intones) invented by the Italian Futurist artist and composer Luigi Russolo and kinetic sculpture of Jean Tinguely, it also speaks of his childhood and adolescence in 1970s and early 1980s Japan, a time when that nation was undergoing rapid economic development. Growing up surrounded by American pop culture and then-novel plastic household appliances, his passion for Punk and New Wave led him towards an interest, as he puts it, in ‘art as material realism rather than the planar illusions of painting, manga and animation’.
The renowned Japanese sculptor and musician Ujino Muneteru (born Tokyo, 1964) founded The Rotators in 2004, a band whose members consist of ordinary household appliances, including blenders, hairdryers and power tools. While Ujino’s work recalls both the Intonarumori (noise intones) invented by the Italian Futurist artist and composer Luigi Russolo and kinetic sculpture of Jean Tinguely, it also speaks of his childhood and adolescence in 1970s and early 1980s Japan, a time when that nation was undergoing rapid economic development. Growing up surrounded by American pop culture and then-novel plastic household appliances, his passion for Punk and New Wave led him towards an interest, as he puts it, in ‘art as material realism rather than the planar illusions of painting, manga and animation’.
CONCERT
FRIDAY, 16.OCTOBER 2009 – 8.00 pm – 9.00 pm
Yokohama Creativecity Center (YCC) / 1st Floor
JAPAN
*FREE ENTRY*
