Open Reel Ensemble closes the opening day of the Forum with a performative Q&A on reels. Two-time laureate of the Japan Media Arts Festival, Open Reel Ensemble, founded in 2009 and whose current members include Haruka Yoshida, Ei Wada and Masaru Yoshida, has an undoubtedly signature approach to creation and music making.
Using old reel-to-reel tape recorders from the ‘70s and ‘80s hooked up to controllers and obsolete electrical devices, the ensemble delivers a live musical performance as irresistible as it is atypical.

Featuring the band in conversation with MUTEK’s, Maurice Jones this session will dive into Open Reel Ensemble’s motivations behind their uncanny musical universe, the definition of their self-described style of “magnetikpunk” and the experience of providing music for four Issey Miyake’s fashion shows. The conversation will be followed by a live demonstration of how the group uses vintage reel-to-reel tape recorders as instruments, ahead of their performance at Nocturne 1 on August 23rd.

The concept of Artificial Intelligence is elusive. Even for experts from a variety of fields it is hard to pin down what exactly constitutes AI. This panel discussion invites Montreal-based multidisciplinary artists Myriam Bleau and Greg Debicki (Woulg), and Japanese AI researcher and musician Nao Tokui, who all engage with AI in the performances they present at this year’s festival. Led by MUTEK.JP’s Artistic Director and critical AI researcher Maurice Jones the discussion explores the idea of intelligence as an emergent feature of co-creative human-machine interaction. Drawing upon the artists’ practice the panel questions emergence as the possibility for a multiplicity of previously unknown and undetermined interactions to take place in stark contradiction to techno-deterministic narratives.

Maurice Jones, MUTEK.JP Artistic Director and critical AI researcher, talks to Chinese-Canadian multidisciplinary artist Sougwen Chung and Japanese innovator and artists Daito Manabe. Following Sougwen's live premiere of Flora Rearing Agricultural Network a day prior the conversation will see a joint exploration of approaches to human/non-human collaboration both conceptually and through artistic practices. This conversation will dive into the intersection of the organic and technological in human-machine assemblages, emergent intelligence in self-sustained systems, and the theoretical and practical implications of these on artistic practice and beyond.