Takeshi Murata

Biography

Takeshi Murata (b. 1974) is an American contemporary artist who creates digital media artworks using video and computer animation techniques. “The decision to focus on animation came naturally. I've always loved cartoons, and when I finally saw experimental animation, and what independent artists were making outside of the studio system, I knew it’s what I wanted to do.” In 2007 he had a solo exhibition, Black Box: Takeshi Murata, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. His 2006 work 'Pink Dot' is in the Hirshhorn's permanent collection, and his 2005 work 'Monster Movie' is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His 2013 short film 'OM Rider' was selected to screen as an animated short film at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Key works completed by Murata in the mid-2000s exploited the introduction of distortions to previously recorded videos, a practice commonly found in glitch art. A 2009 article in Artforum about Murata's art noted that "the artificial palette, flashing lights, abstract patterns, and coarsely pixelated texture of Pink Dot and other works by Murata locate him in the tradition of electronic animation pioneered by John Whitney and Lillian Schwartz. But while his predecessors were testing the computer's ability to replicate the cinematic illusion of movement, Murata uses the tools of consumer-level film-editing software to undo that illusion, with trails of pixel dust tracking the changing positions of the image from frame to frame."