Alan Nakagawa

BIOGRAPHY

Alan Nakagawa has worked primarily in sound and has been creating audience participatory sound experiences for the past decade. Drawing from diverse influences such as the Integratron Sound Bath in Joshua Tree CA, the frequency cluster studies of 1930’s scientist Royal Rife or his fascination with ultra-sonic communication of bats and marine mammal, Nakagawa has created a repertoire of installations and sound works that breakdown and then expand our understanding of listening.

His primary sound sources are field recordings, analog effects boxes, oscillators, and his invention the Iso Cube which is a mini-isolation box that houses objects and allows him to processes odd textures and pseudo-rhythms using micro percussion which he loops and builds into what he terms as “thick chords”.

In 2013, Nakagawa was awarded a Cultural Exchange International Grant through the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department which allowed him to participate in an Artist in Residency program at the University of Barcelona. Through the University, he was granted permission by the Sagrada Familia, which was designed by Antoni Gaudi, to be the first artist to conduct a field recording of the interior space. Along with field recordings taken at Watts Towers in Los Angeles and other unique architectural works, Nakagawa is working on a vibratory sound installation that is inspired by the concept of omnipresence.

Nakagawa has presented his work locally, nationally and internationally at such venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Soundwalk (Long Beach CA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, East LA REP, the.wulf., Highways, REDCAT, Japanese American National Museum, the Getty Center, La Panaderia (Mexico), Oogimachi Museum Square (Japan), Senin Theater (Osaka) and NIU (Barcelona Spain).

Nakagawa is q recipient of the 2012 California Community Foundation Mid-Career Fellowship. He holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Otis Art Institute, a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California Irvine and is a Monbusho (Ministry of Culture and Education, Japan) Scholar. He has lectured at various local and international universities; curates the weekly experimental music webcast Ear Meal; co-founded and directed Collage Ensemble Inc., managed mural projects for the Social and Public Art Resource Center and is currently a Senior Public Arts Officer for the LA Metro.