Profile

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 Hatakeyama's work, and she most often finds beauty in simplicity. Hatakeyama 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.

Hatakeyama’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 Hatakeyama’s research and teaching.

Hatakeyama has performed and presented her work in the US, Europe, Japan, and South Korea including at Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, International Computer Music Conference, International Symposium on Electronic Art, and International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, where she won the Best Music Performance award in 2018.

Hatakeyama obtained her B.A. in music from Mills College, M.A. in Experimental Music/Composition at Wesleyan University, and Ph.D. at the MEME program at Brown University. She joined the Music Technology program at the University of Oregon in 2016 as an assistant professor.