(b. 1935) is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Tokyo, Japan and working in New York City. He graduated from Chiba University in 1957 with a major in Japanese Literature. An important figure in postwar Japanese art during the sixties, he was active in many facets of the Tokyo art scene. He was a central member of Group Ongaku and was associated with a number of other Japanese art groups such as Neo-Dada Organizers, Hi-Red Center, and Team Random (the first computer art group organized in Japan). Tone was also a member of Fluxus and one of the founding members of its Japanese branch. Many of his works were performed at Fluxus festivals or distributed by George Maciunas’s various Fluxus operations. Relocating to the United States in 1972, he has since gained a reputation as a musician, performer and writer working with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Senda Nengudi, Florian Hecker, and many others. Tone is also known as a pioneer of “Glitch” music due to his groundbreaking modifications of compact discs and CD players. Early life in Tokyo While in high-school Tone became interested in Japanese Avant-Garde poetry and prose of the 1920s and 30s. After entering the Literature program at Chiba National University, where he was enrolled from 1953-1957, Tone’s interest in literature expanded to a more general interest in the modernism of the interwar period. During this time, Tone was particularly influenced by Assistant Professor Tsuneyoshi Shigenobu and the instructor Isamu Kurita. Under Shigenobu’s guidance, Tone and his classmates translated Maurice Blanchot’s La Part du feu over a two-year period. Kurita, on the other hand, taught Tone about Bataille as well as introduced him to critics and poets of his own generation such as Yoshiaki Tōno, Kōichi Iijima and Makoto Ōoka. Tone, meanwhile, continued to seek out prewar Japanese avant-garde culture in journals such as “Shi to Shinron,” “Ge.Gjgjgam.Prr.Gjmgem,” “Bara●Majutsu●Gakusetsu,” and “Fukuikutaru Kafu-yo” and through the work of Tomoyoshi Murayama and his Mavo group. Tone then wrote his thesis on Dada and Surrealism, interviewing many of the prominent figures of the 20th century avant-garde in Japan in the process such as Katsue Kitazono, Shūzō Takiguchi, Kōichi Kihara and Sansei Yamanaka. Group Ongaku and Other Early Artistic Activity In the late 1950s, Shūko Mizuno, Tone’s classmate at Chiba University enrolled at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, abbrev. Geidai) and began musically improvising