Born 1980 in Fukuoka Prefecture (Japan), based in Tokyo.

Graduated Kyoto University of Art and Design in 2003; earned his MFA at Tokyo University of Arts in 2005. Ikeda's works deal with the cycles of ecosystems and water, and conversion of electricity, light, and other forms of energy. He began working on "Tokyo Art-Power Plant" in 2011, and has subsequently pursued related projects in a number of places, including Ofunato, Melbourne, and Minami-Soma in Fukushima Prefecture. In these pieces he used a bicycle and a few everyday items to construct simple devices capable of generating electricity, turning his own physical energy into electrical power. On one level these projects are about electric power generation, but Ikeda went to places badly shaken by the Great East Japan Earthquake, cities affected by the subsequent power shortages, communities where there is a particularly high awareness of energy issues, and worked in conjunction with the people there, so the results inevitably raise questions about energy issues and the place of energy in our communities and in our personal lives. What Ikeda is doing, with his own physical strength, is to reexamine axioms and technologies and seemingly homogenous communities to create the thoughts and energies necessary to the activities of modern humans. He starts out from the individual unit – each single member of a community, each drop of water in an ocean – to present in visual form the great chains and cycles that connect people and energy and nature.

《Excycle》2012 Installation view at RMIT Project Space, Melbourne photo: Andrew Barcham