Ryoji Ikeda is a Japanese visual and sound artist who currently lives and works in Paris, France. Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and noise, often using frequencies at the edges of the range of human hearing. The conclusion of his album +/- features just such a tone; of it, Ikeda says "a high frequency sound is used that the listener becomes aware of only upon its disappearance". Rhythmically, Ikeda's music is highly imaginative, exploiting beat patterns and, at times, using a variety of discrete tones and noise to create the semblance of a drum machine. His work also encroaches on the world of ambient music; many tracks on his albums are concerned with slowly evolving soundscapes, with little or no sense of pulse.
Ryoji Ikeda was born in Gifu, Gifu Prefecture, Japan in 1966.
In addition to working as a solo artist, he has also collaborated with, among others, Carsten Nicolai and the art collective Dumb Type. His work matrix won the Golden Nica Award in 2001.
In 2004, the dormant Saarinen-designed TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport briefly hosted an art exhibition called Terminal 5 curated by Rachel K.