Mendi Obadike ( in 1973) and Keith Obadike (born 1973) are an Igbo Nigerian American couple who create music, writing, and art. Their music, live art and conceptual Internet artworks have been exhibited internationally. She is an associate professor in Writing and Media Studies at Pratt Institute; he is a professor at Cornell University. Mendi is a poet and Keith is a composer and sound artist. Their writing and art projects have been featured in Art Journal, Artthrob, Meridians, Black Arts Quarterly, El País and Tema Celeste, in books such as Internet Art (2004) by Rachel Greene, Sound Unbound (2008), edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky, and featured several times on WNYC's New Sounds since 2007. Early lives and educations Mendi Obadike Mendi Lewis Obadike was born in 1973 in Palo Alto, California while her parents were completing graduate work at Stanford. She grew up writing poems, singing in bands and acting in theater as a child. Early on, she experimented making songs with cassette overdubs of her Casio keyboard and computer graphics on a Commodore computer. Her mother's research in linguistics and father's stint as the founding director of Black studies at the University of California at Berkeley sparked her interest in language and culture. Later Mendi studied Latin, became fluent in Spanish and lived and studied in Venezuela and later the Dominican Republic. Mendi wrote her first play and edited Focus literary journal while living in Atlanta and studying at Spelman College. She graduated with highest honors in English and was awarded a fellowship to pursue a Ph.D. in Literature and Sound Theory at Duke University and joined the Cave Canem Poetry Collective. Keith Obadike Keith Obadike was born in 1973 in Nashville, Tennessee. His mother worked as an administrator at the post office and his father (who studied briefly with inventor Buckminster Fuller) was an electrical engineer from Nigeria. While growing up in Nashville, Keith studied classical piano, woodwinds and began programming BASIC on a TRS-80 computer, and worked as a sound designer and producer on the local hip-hop scene. He was subsequently discovered by Kedar Massenburg (Motown Records president) and was signed to MCA records where he worked with R&B artists such as D'Angelo and Angie Stone as well as performed in concert with Lauryn Hill/the Fugees and P-Funk. He later met and was influenced by electronic music composers like Paul Lansky and Olly