About Cognitive Space & DJ Tendai
About DJ Tendai
Tendai is a London based DJ / producer based in London with interests not only in music but in movies, philosophy, society, cognition, art and events.
Musically
Tendai started life as a club promoter in 2000 where he promoted his first night at The Scala in Kings Cross, which brought together elements of interactive live visuals, a fashion show and a concert together with a club night which was highly successful. After that working with for some production companies. He later crossed paths with the audio-visual collective Hexion and went on to form a longstanding relationship which lasted many years. It was under the Hexion guise that they started the the first regular drum ‘n’ bass night in Shoreditch in 2001 at the legendary Herbal nightclub. The night was an audiovisual showcase that formed various offshoots and helped forge the successful careers for all members of the crew
It was through the Hexion nights that Tendai took to DJing and within no time gained high recognition within the drum ‘n’ bass scene playing alongside the likes of Goldie, Grooverider and Andy C.
Tendai become resident DJ at The Herbal playing for the likes of Hospital Records and Grooverider’s Grace. In 2006 he joined the Groove Connection Agency (who look after the likes of Fabio, Grooverider, Bryan G) and became a resident at the legendary Swerve and has been playing there ever since seeing the night move from The End, to Ruby Lo, to Cable, to Plan B, and Qube Project and beyond.
Becoming Swerve resident opened many doors for Tendai and he has since toured Japan & Brazil playing at many clubs including the legendary Drum ‘n’ Bass Sessions at Unit in Tokyo & was also a guest on DJ Marky’s Energia 97FM radio show; held further residencies at Horse & Groom, The Lockside Lounge, Turnmills & Movement at Bar Rumba; played at superclubs Fabric, Heaven, Cable, The End; been booked to play across Europe in places like Estonia, Austria & Barcelona;
At the same time as growing within the drum ‘n’ bass world his musical scope diversified to all the genres he knows and loves and can be seen also playing broken beat, nu jazz, lounge, hip hop, house, r&b, funk & disco at many a London club forging a career as successful in these genres and his own within drum ‘n’ bass. This has seen him play at many an upmarket club like The Kensington Roof Gardens, Hampton Court Palace, St Martin’s Lane Hotel, The Met Bar & Coq d’Argent.
Tendai has also featured in magazines & newspapers such as Knowledge, The Metro, The Guestlist Network & Fried My Little Brain. He has also played on radio stations such as Rinse FM, Block FM (Tokyo) and Bassdrive
Non-musically
Tendai’s educational background is in the sciences, but his interests lay as much in the arts as in the sciences. When he undertook further studies he was at a transect between the arts and the sciences, and chose science – this website in many ways is a remerging of the two. Together with this and his vast interest in music, Tendai is currently researching music not only as an art form but why it plays such a huge part in this life as well as the cognitive effects it has on society.
Tendai also has a vast interest in philosophy, futurism, society, social movements – this new digital revolution we are currently going through is so fast moving and is having huge effects of society culturally, musically & cognitively and will be explored throughout the site.
On top of this movies play a huge part in Tendai’s life as well as food – so there will be plenty of food and movie reviews up on the site as well.
About This Site
This site is an unique mix of thoughts, memories, music and ideas. It’s a canvas where Tendai’s ideas are fleshed out crisscrossing & encompassing a wide variety of themes & subjects such as music, movies, society, philosophy, subculture and much more.
This site initially started through the need to create a DJ website to put up Tendai’s mixtapes, gig information and such, but has evolved into something so much more and so Cognitive Space was born
What exactly are cognitive spaces?
Time to get a little technical……. “Cognitive space used the analogy of location of two, three or higher dimensional space to describe and categorize thoughts, memories and ideas. Cognitive space is the starting point for any innovation, as it is the place where humans initiate and organize their thoughts, ideas and memories. The basic unit of cognitive space is the individual who interacts with and makes sense of the surrounding physical environment through information space. Each individual has his/her own cognitive space, resulting in unique categorization of their ideas.”
“Cognitive spaces can be understood as “workspaces of the mind” and as “externally related”—maybe call it “out-bound” workspaces of the mind or “exo-somatic”.
It’s through these definitions that Tendai came with the idea to create this website.
There are current 6 main sections to this site:
Blog: randomness, jokes, things generally on his mind and what Tendai is up to on the day to day
My Media: Please check this section for all Tendai’s latest DJ mixes, music, movies, video, photos will go in here
Musicology: music related articles and reviews
Film: movie reviews, cinema recommendations, film theory, articles
Society: social commentary on a wide range of subjects effecting us at the moment
London: Tendai’s guide to entertainment in London as he hits them from cinemas, bars, galleries, restaurants, shops
Events: The current events you can catch Tendai DJing at regularly
Cognitive Space Facebook Page: This page is an extention of the site and will contain a lot of content which doesn’t appear on the site such as music, interesting articles from others, movie trailers, events happening around London etc – http://www.facebook.com/cognitivespaceuk
Expect plenty of cross pollination of the subjects between each other – as well as plenty of randomness and fun. This site is quite the experiment and will be very organic – the areas of focus of its various branches will morph over time depending on the experiences Tendai is exposed to in my on and offline life