Behind The Screens: Chiho Oka
An interview with artist Chiho Oka.
Chiho Oka, is an artist exploring algorithmic variability or regularities for manipulating human behaviors, conceived from her experience in computer and experimental music. In this interview, we’d like to talk about her practices and tools, as well as work in the community and her upcoming activities.
What is live coding, what does it mean to you and how has it influenced your practice of making and thinking about art?
Live coding is an exercise of exploring ideas between sound, image, and computing systems. Nothing more, nothing less. Based on this premise, I think I have learned from live coding that the mechanism of making things may be exhibitable (i.e., may become a work of art).
I used to think that mechanisms and technologies are only the background of what appears as representations when I was around twenty-years-old, but I felt that this is not the case when I am programming. I was able to experience the fun of it by using live coding as an entry point, even though I didn’t do engineering or anything like that. So the act of just doing live code is a very good thing.
Could you tell us what your first encounter with live coding was and
what are your sources of inspiration?
I watched and listened to Renick perform and his screen for my first encounter with live coding. I had never written codes at all, but I really liked how the letters on the screen came out nice.
By then, I was playing with an ensemble on a Fluxus-influenced experimental music score (basically written in letters and diagrams, not staves) so I readily accepted programs as something like experimental notation.
A musical score requires humans to read it, the human subjectivity is usually the same, so the result of the performance is fairly predictable (I think). But the reader of a program is a computer. So I thought it was quite interesting that a third party with quite different subjectivity intervened and made the instruction work.
Do you have any preferred platforms and/or languages, how did you come to use them and do you have a specific reason for it?
Playing TidalCycles, I thought it is interesting to see how a simple pattern could be complicated to form a larger pattern.
But I can’t think too deeply about synthesis (envelopes and their patterns), and I’ve been thinking lately that I’d like to shift a bit more in that direction.
I’ve been thinking about how I can use SuperCollider, and recently I’ve been working on Steno by Julian Rohrhuber, which moxus tweeted a bit. I started working on it. I can’t do nearly anything with it yet, but it’s working pretty well for use in improvisational collaboration.
Are there any platforms, tools, libraries or other extensions you
have developed yourself and if so can you elaborate on why and for
what purpose?
Not particularly. I think I’m standing in a thoroughly non-developer position at the moment.
Are you part of a (local) community? How do you organize and do you share works or collaborate often?
Remain neither too close to nor too distant.
Regarding venues, I’ve been playing more and more at Ftarri lately; it’s a CD store, and they have an interesting lineup of releases. Awesome good place. Bandcamp: https://ftarri.bandcamp.com/
I still love Soup too. I haven’t been able to go there much. Those places are more like training grounds than playgrounds or showcase places. I can listen to sound (=think) properly about what I am doing.
In what forms are algorithms and randomness applied in your practice or performance? Do you try to pursue serendipity and how or why not?
I still find randomness boring when it is used purely in music. However, I feel that there are still times when randomness has more interesting things to say than such superficial triviality. For example, the playback of random strings on YouTube, such as my work I introduced.
YouTube’s API (application programming interface) does not allow me to perpetuate random searches like the one in the video, but this can be accomplished by taking on the body of a human operator by automatically moving the GUI (cursor and keyboard input). This automatic random search allows me to continue to watch dozens of seconds of extremely bad videos.
If this program were applied to, say, Spotify, it would be pretty boring. But when applied to a library called YouTube, the execution results become interesting. I think randomness is nothing more or less than a seed for the decision of where to cut out nature’s sceneries or human ideas.
Other my favorite about randomness: Borges’ Library of Babel, slot machines and gambling, Yasuko Toyoshima’s “Dice”.
Do you have any recommendations for people who have not gotten into live/creative coding but are curious to give it a try?
Just code. That’s a good thing!
I have been sensing quite a bit of clutter in the talk about “live coding” in cultural studies circles lately. It seems to me that it is just being collected by superficial political correctness. They can talk like “knowing how it works is important,” but they don’t do it, never.
I’m finding it difficult these days to figure out how to verbalize the quality of the act of exploring ideas while writing code.
But, also it’s important not to immerse oneself in the act of writing code or its significance alone. We should learn how to do deep listening, field recording, and so on. Because without the ability to listen or watch, we will only be able to talk about “genre”.
Could you share a sneak-peek into an upcoming project or something you are currently working on and very excited about?
(1)
I have recently become interested in cards. I don’t really know why I am interested in them. But maybe I’ll make a card in the near future.
(1–1) I received Canon cards from my friend, and this is the first time I learned that this kind of card existed. It seems that if you took a picture of a barcode on a card with a camera that had a barcode mode at the time, it would load the same settings as the picture on the card. And each photo on this card is subtly interesting :D
(1–2) I think that tarot cards are instantaneous compositions, and I thought it was a nice cultural con to make up a story that looks like that instantaneously while looking at the pictures and convincing the other person. The other day, I happened to have my fortune read by someone who knows a lot about the process of tarot card formation and such. He is a theater guy and he writes plays. It was indeed interesting. Xenakis has a tarot card episode, doesn’t he? I am interested in it. The episode was about Oliveros giving Xenakis a tarot reading. (from Oliveros’ “Software for People”)
(2) I am going to think about practice deeply.
There are too many events these days and I’m so tired (In terms of time and physical strength.). We make everything too official. I feel that everything is getting showcased.
But I think practice and something private are interesting. I am more happy to be asked to practice together than to be asked to participate in an event.
So recently, I want to think deeply about practice. When it comes to fruition, maybe it will become something public.
Is there anything we did not ask about but you would really like to
share with the readers?
Shun Owada
http://www.shunowada.com/
https://www.tokyoartsandspace.jp/en/archive/exhibition/2016/20160109-5058.html
He is known for his work with microphones to amplify the ancient air that comes out when limestone is melted. At the same time, he is a SuperCollider master, and I first learned SC from him. He also taught me about “Dice” by Toyoshima. I was a student. Now he is also teaching SC to college students in the philosophy department. Super weird person.
Link List
https://okachiho.net/
https://twitter.com/chihooka (Japanese)
https://www.instagram.com/okachiho/
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This article is part of the Behind The Screens series of Creative Coding Utrecht — a series of events where digital artists and live coders create a piece in ten minutes.
Watch Season 1 // Watch season 2 // More interviews
The Behind The Screens series is suppported by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industries and Gemeente Utrecht.
