Takeshi Murata is an artist born in 1974 from Chicago, United States of America. From the earliest timing he was using data-moshing in his works. Later in the Glitch movement, he was commonly mentioned as one of the pioneers. On the surface, Murata\u2019s works do not allow for the insertion of emotion. He doesn\u2019t try to hide the perfect cleanliness of digital. On the surface of his works, it is a conceptual object, distant from reality and this concept is always in the forefront. Regardless, for example if we were to gaze into \u201cGet Your Ass to Mars\u201d for a long time, you would have the impression that your looking at a still photo of one scene of a very long movie. The naive mind manifests a still photo with no referential story. As a naive mind must be, it is restless, however at the same time in a meditational state like serenity. Murata\u2019s works create and mindset that makes you feel like something is about to happen, at the same time it feels like the ruins after everything has ended.<\/p>\n
In your early works, you took glitch art into your movies as an art expression. How did you come across glitch art? And I’d like to ask you about treating glitch in your works, what do you see or think of glitch as?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I first started making those videos around 2003, I was coming from a film background and unaware of glitch as an art expression. I was watching films of artists like Pat O\u2019Neill, Ed Emshwiller, and Steina Vasulka. The directness of their approach, putting the medium up front instead of backing a narrative, felt relevant despite having been made over twenty years before. And it was still subversive. I was looking at the digital medium this way, and the idea came in a failed download. I never actually watched the movie I attempted to pirate, but the dropped keyframes in the compression opened the door to a lot of experimentation. <\/p>\n In your taste of work, I think it has a very psychedelic aspect (I’m sorry, if it is a sort of inappropriate way to say). As for what is called “psychedelic” culture, what do you think of the difference or similarity between your work and it?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are many similarities in my early videos. Most similar is alternate mind-states as the point of departure, and the goal. Film and video are particularly well suited for this. The illusion, and specifically persistence of vision, is truly psychedelic, but it\u2019s also so powerful that it\u2019s invisible as soon as the movie starts playing. <\/p>\n At the last of “OM Rider”, a wolf man is playing a song called “Taps” with a trumpet, which is played in the US army’s funeral ceremony. I felt it was very impressive in the contrast between the song and the sound of the synthesizer at the beginning of the movie. You have a distinctive taste in terms of the sound in your movies, so I’d like to ask you about the relevance between music and your works.<\/strong><\/p>\n The wolf playing taps was a recording of a kid who was in his first year, or maybe first week, of playing the trumpet. I loved the sincerity. I found it a fitting tribute to the old man. Despite this sincerity on the wolf\u2019s side, his lack of skill ultimately mocks the old man\u2019s demise.<\/p>\n The soundtrack also creates an opportunity to collaborate with other artists. I look forward to this step in the process, and often the sound will inform the work as well. Robert Beatty and I have worked together in almost all my projects. He is a talented musician, and in recent years shown the same aptitude in visual art. Devin Flynn is another multi-talented artist I\u2019ve been lucky to work with.<\/p>\n