Choir concert presented at the UNT College of Music Winspear Performance Hall.

The white paper on comprehensive environmental policy describes the role of Japan's economy in a sound global environment. In the first part, the report describes current the environmental conditions of the Earth and of Japan, human activities in Japan and overseas, their environmental impacts, and the pathway to the environmental century. The second part of the white paper reports on various measures.

The document contains the opening addresses of the conveners and presentation slides of the presenters in the Tokyo Office of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) event. The conference was organized around the idea of introducing two important groups to each other to stimulate new ideas to break through barriers for carbon management, a major environmental and social challenge in the 21st Century.

The August 2003 blackout of the northeastern U.S. and CANADA caused great economic losses and inconvenience to New York City and other affected areas. The blackout was a warning to the rest of the world that the ability of conventional power systems to meet growing electricity demand is questionable. Failure of large power systems can lead to serious emergencies. Introduction of on-site generation, renewable energy such as solar and wind power and the effective utilization of exhaust heat is needed, to meet the growing energy demands of the residential and commercial sectors. Additional benefit can be achieved by integrating these distributed technologies into distributed energy resource (DER) systems. This work demonstrates a method for choosing and designing economically optimal DER systems. An additional purpose of this research is to establish a database of energy tariffs, DER technology cost and performance characteristics, and building energy consumption for Japan. This research builds on prior DER studies at the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and with their associates in the Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions (CERTS) and operation, including the development of the microgrid concept, and the DER selection optimization program, the Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM). DER-CAM …

Recording of John Gibson's Detour. This work uses recorded sounds of the subways in Tokyo and Kyoto, including machine sounds and platform announcements. The electronic sounds are meant to sharpen the qualities of the soundscape recordings which the composer created on a trip they made to Japan. The sounds of this piece are meant to suggest the feeling of disorientation and dislocation that come with traveling in an unfamiliar, fast-paced city.

Concert presented at Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

Concert presented at the UNT College of Music Concert Hall.

Ensemble performance at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall

Recording of Manuel Rocha Iturbide's Parlantes. This work was inspired by the abundance of screens and loud speakers that fill big cities in Japan. The composer explores the role speakers now play in the daily cultures of Japanese cities. The protagonists of this composition are the speakers and the recorders that reproduce these sounds. This reflects the gradual disintegration of the human voice through modern technology.

Recording of Michel Karsky's Contr'gris. This work was created for the Autumn Music Festival in Moscow and includes spoken Japanese and French text. The word "grisaille" is repeated several times and this composition plays on the notion of "grisaille". The title was recommended to the composer by a Russian musicologist who emphasized the importance of an accent when speaking it.

Recording of Guillermo Senn's Sensaciones 2. This work is a continuation to the piece "Sensaciones 1" by the same composer. The piece was inspired by the world of the senses and their varying levels. The composer notes the text at the end as a social complaint towards many countries around the world struggling with political peace. The excerpt comes from the film "Madadayo" by Akira Kurosawa.