source: the-rotators

UJINO is known for creating sound sculptures using electronic products such as decorative truck lighting and electric drills, the Love Arm series, as well as a variety of live performances. His The Rotators project, for example, consists of performances and installations featuring Rotatorhead, a hybrid DJ turntable/musical box mechanism in which modified vinyl records rhythmically trigger a collection of consumer electronic devices.
One might find the influence of the futurist Luigi Russolo, who invented noise instruments, or NeoDadaism, which sought the reality its time from an industrialized society’s “naturalism.” But when industrialized societies developed, they were inhabited by societies of hysterical mass-consumption. Growing up in the midst of such a time in Japan, UJINO combines various products born of his time, constructing a world of “naturalism” in a mass-consumption society. The world keeps changing. Today we are aware of the limits and ends of modern material civilization. UJINO’s work, in which pleasure and criticism co-exist, can be seen as an experiment to extract a vision for creating future art forms through investigations, and reconstructions of the past.
This exhibition features over a decade of UJINO’s work, featuring the Love Arm series as well as other outstanding work from The Rotators project. The show will also present new large-scale work using automobiles.

彫刻の森美術館は、現代の新しい美術表現を紹介するシリーズの第4回として「宇治野宗輝　 ポップ／ライフ」展を開催します。
宇治野宗輝は、90年代より、装飾トラックの電飾や電動ドリルなどの電気製品を用いて「Love Arm（ラヴ・アーム）」シリーズをはじめとするサウンド・スカルプチャーを制作し、数々のライヴ・パフォーマンスを披露してきました。その発展形である「The Rotators（ザ・ローテーターズ）」プロジェクトでは、DJ用ターンテーブルに細工を施したレコード盤をのせたローテーターヘッドと、それに接続する一連のモーター駆動の家電製品による自動リズム演奏装置を制作しています。
こうした作品には、騒音楽器を考案した未来派のルイージ・ルッソロや、工業化社会における自然主義的な視点で時代のリアリティを見いだそうとしたネオ・ダダの影響を見ることができるかもしれません。しかし、工業化社会が成熟すると、世界を席巻していったのは狂乱の大量消費社会でした。そうした時代の只中に育った宇治野は、産み落とされた数々の製品をつなぎあわせ、“大量消費社会の自然主義”ともいえる世界観を構築しています。世界はさらに変貌し、私たちを支えて来た近代の物質文明の限界と終焉を予感させる現在、享楽と批評が同居する宇治野の作品は、過去を調査して再構築する中から未来のアートを作るヴィジョンを抽出するための実験といえます。「Love Arm」シリーズや「The Rotators」プロジェクトの代表作とともに、自動車を使った大型作品の新作を発表する本展は、10年以上に及ぶ宇治野の活動の集大成となります
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source: nasherdukeedu

Ujino Muneteru lives and works in Tokyo, where he was born in 1964. He earned his B.A. in craft from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1988.

Muneteru’s solo exhibitions include Ujino and the Rotators, Hayward Project Space, London (2009); Crossband, PSM, Berlin (2008); The Rotators-Robertson and Phillips, Western Front, Vancouver (2007); Ujino and the Rotators, Bankart Studio NYK, Kanagawa, Japan (2006); Ujino’s Machinery Lab, Super Deluxe, Tokyo (2003); and Ujino’s Love Arm, Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo (2001).

Group exhibitions include EXPosition of Mythology-Electronic Technology, Nam June Paik Art Center, Gyeonggi-do, Korea (2009); Trend of Contemporary Art, Gyeongnam Art Museum, Changwon, Korea (2008); KITA!!: Japanese Artists Meet Indonesia, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2008); After the Reality 2, Deitch Projects, New York (2008); Re-imagining Asia, House of World Cultures, Berlin (2008); Beautiful New World: Contemporary Visual Culture from Japan, Long March, Beijing, and the Guandong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China (2007); 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006); Officina Asai, Galeria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (2004); and Jam: London-Tokyo, Barbican Gallery, London (2001).
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source: we-make-money-not-art

okyo based sound sculpture artist and performer Ujino Muneteru’s Rotators is a giant tweaked-out jewelry box of modern and out-dated technology. While many old objects are ubiquitous in Muneteru’s work, its not the same old story of trash art. Muneteru works to discover new histories in material objects once discarded only to delicately care for them in hopes of restoring any sentimental value once lost. Tangled in Pop Art, Noise and some Dada, his conversions, performances and arrangements of junk and vintage are an insight into the role of materialism and what is of value in our lives- what is deemed junk or vintage or valid pop-iconography is largely up to the viewer. WMMNA caught up with Muneteru in his Tokyo studio to discuss the ‘Japan-ness’ of his work, all things junk and vintage and how dance culture fits into everything he does.