Mitchell Akyama

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Montreal-based musician and media artist Mitchell Akiyama is perhaps best known for his electronic deconstructions of traditional instrumental music. Since his debut recording on Alien8 Recordings, Hope that lines don’t cross, he has emerged as one of Canada’s premier electronic composers and has gone on to record for internationally renowned label such as German minimalist label Raster Noton (Temporary Music, 2002) and Belgian sound art innovator Sub Rosa (If night is a weed and day grows less, 2004).

Akiyama’s music is a study in fiction and texture. He records compositions and improvisations for piano, strings and other instruments and restructures them in his studio in a post-facto montage. Playing on the distortions in causality that recording technology can effect, Akiyama creates music that lays claim to a moment of creation that never happened. Imperfections – fingers scraping strings, breaths and other signs of humanity – are underscored resulting in a digital simulacrum of performance. Located somewhere in the interstices of classical, electronic composition and post-rock, his works vacillate between delicate melodies and confrontational bursts of noise. Akiyama has performed extensively in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia at festivals such as Sonar (Barcelona), Mutek (Montreal), Futuresonic (Manchester), Sintesi (Naples) and This is not art (Newcastle, Australia). His works have been broadcast by the CBC, VPRO
(Dutch national radio) and several other radio stations from Vancouver to Tokyo.

In 2001 Akiyama founded intr_version records to address the under-representation of Canadian composers of electronic music. It has since become a looked-to outlet for music at the intersection of digital culture.
The label’s eleven releases - ten by Canadian artists – have helped to bring international attention to Canada’s fertile and vibrant electronic arts culture. Akiyama’s visual work primarily focuses on modes of classification. His videos, photographs and writings question notions of authenticity and authority through the manipulation of scale and content. A current work in progress, En mauvaise herbe, is a study of decisions that are made at an institutional level as to what forms of life are to be encouraged and discouraged in urban environments. The project proposes a critique through photography and writing that draws on traditions from natural history to critical theory. The first materialization of En mauvaise herbe took the form of a audio/video performance at Montreal’s Elektra festival in November, 2003. Akiyama’s videos have been screened at festivals such as Standart (Spain),
FCMM (Montreal) and Images du nouveau monde (Quebec).

Akiyama is currently pursuing his MFA in the Open Media program at Concordia University. He is the holder of the Dora Morrow Fellowship for excellence in visual arts