This 5-channel sound-based workfrom 2016 was prompted by the life of Andrew's, Lovell Cardenas. An engineer, Lovell helped to develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II as an employee of the Manhattan Project. He was secretive about his work, as he was about much else in his life.

Manhattan Project seeks to evoke the creation of the atomic bomb from the perspective of an engineer, enmeshed in the defining political conflicts of the era. The droning of calutrons used to enrich uranium and the 44.4 second long free fall of the bomb find their place alongside propaganda, crooner Perry Como, and the "Internationale" in the soundscape of the piece.

Rough Ride is an 8-channel sound-based work that weaves together sounds from the Baltimore Uprising following the killing of Freddie Gray by the Baltimore Police and audio culled from social and mass media, along with the sounds of police surveillance, control, and violence.

This piece folds the narrative of events over itself, playing the sounds of protest, politicians' awkward, tone-deaf speeches, the breathless, pro-police biased coverage of the media, and push back against it from fed-up community members alongside audio portraying the rough ride itself, putting the listener in the position of Gray inside the van. The sounds of the Uprising rise in intensity along with the vehicular sounds of the ride towards an overwhelming, cataclysmic crescendo. These sounds play out from six speakers on a 16 foot long shelf, offering no opportunity to hear and comprehend the entire sequence of events from any given position. The listener must choose what they will hear, and what they will avoid hearing. Above, the sound of the Baltimore Police Foxtrot helicopters unceasingly play from three speakers hung from the celling, a constant reminder of the surveillance state, and the violence that flows from it.

This two-channel sound based work contemplates the scientific and political career of Niels Bohr.  A Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, Bohr's work was essential to the the growing understanding of atomic structure in the pre-war world, as well as the development of the atomic bomb during WWII. While Bohr was a part of both the British nuclear weapons program and later the Manhattan Project itself, he was a strong proponent of openness and sharing of information as part of a regime of arms control. He was prescient in understanding the arms race that would result from the secret development of the bomb.

This work was exhibited as part of the 2016 Sondheim Artscape Semi-finalist Exhibition.

This work is a collaborative installation by Andrew Paul Keiper and Kei Ito. Ito's grandfather was in Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bomb attack, and went on to become an anti-nuclear activist. Keiper's grandfather was an engineer who contributed to the Manhattan Project. This work, Ash Lexicon-Silverplate was installed in the 2016 Young Blood exhibition at Maryland Art Place, in Baltimore, MD. The film canisters, 108 in number, are filled with ash from a burnt Japanese dictionary, identical to the one owned by Ito's grandfather, which was burned in the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. The audio considers the Silverplate series of B-29 bombers used in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including the Enola Gay and Bockscar, and imagines the lost recording made of the Hiroshima bombing run made on a reel-to-reel wire recorder.

Andrew and Kei's work together seeks to find mutual understanding and reconciliation through examining our shared history. We hope to evoke a sense of  loss and mourning, even while asserting that we have the power to forge a world without the looming nightmare of nuclear war.

Kei Ito's Baker Portfolio can be found here.

This body of work contemplates the history of secrecy, espionage and counter-intellegence that was driven by the development of nuclear weaponry, and drove it forward in turn. It is comprised of a series of monochrome ink paintings on paper and sound recordings.

The ink works might be read as redactions, as one might find in a partially declassified document. At the same time, they can be read as depicting the processes of effects of nuclear weaponry. The two readings operate together as an uneasy palimpsest.

The audio recordings imagine an archive of SIGINT (signals intelligence) or surveillance recordings, presented without clarifying commentary. Hiss, hum and signal drop-out present the listener with additional obscurity to the already mysterious recordings.

Overture (Hollow Earth) is an 11 minute long sound-based work. It was composed by playing out a manipulated recording of radio static  through a speaker in an ordinary room, and recording the pronounced effect of the room's acoustics on the original audio. The original and four recordings made in this room are mixed together in an otherworldly, vast sounding composition.

This piece was exhibited in the 2016 MICA Graduate 1st Year Juried Exhibition in installation form. The sound played out from studio speakers, in a tableaux that emphasizes the constructed nature of the piece, and puts the listener in the position of an audio engineer.