Yoko Sen
Yoko K. Sen is an ambient electronic musician and the founder of Sen Sound, with a vision to transform the sound environment in hospitals. As a classically trained musician, sensitive to sound, she was disturbed by noise she had experienced in hospitals as a patient. Since then, she has embarked on a mission to humanize hospital experience by improving its sound. Yoko is a former citizen artist fellow at Kennedy Center, a former artist-in-residence at Johns Hopkins Sibley Innovation Hub and Stanford Medicine X, and KP Innovation at Kaiser Permanente. Sen Sound has helped medical device companies such as Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson to reimagine the sound experience design, and presented the importance of sound and clinician wellbeing at Northwell Health, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Yoko has presented nationally and internationally, including TEDMED (2018) and Aspen Ideas Festival: Health (2019), and her work has been featured in New York Times, BBC, and STAT. Sen Sound’s initiative, “My Last Sound,” was selected as a Top Idea by Open IDEO’s End of Life challenge, involving hundreds of people from around the world sharing the last sound they wish to hear. Born and raised in Japan, Yoko was classically trained in piano from age three. Yoko had produced the album, “012906,” which was nominated for “Best Album in Electronica” by the 6th Independent Awards. She then produced the album “Heaven’s Library,” for which she received the Washington Music Association Awards for “Best Electronica Artist.” As a self-proclaimed “sound alchemist,” Yoko aspires to create music, which is, to quote Beethoven, “the mediator between the spiritual and sensual life.”
Twitter: @yokoksen
"My Last Sound" at End Well Symposium (Dec 2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmI1MNK6Ns4
Anatomy of a beep: A medical device giant and an avant-garde musician set out to redesign a heart monitor's chirp - STAT (Sep 2018)
https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/10/medtronic-musician-redesign-heart-monitors-beeps/
The simple change that can save people's lives - BBC Future (Aug 2018)
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180810-the-simple-change-that-can-save-patients-lives
Photo Credit: Stanford Medicine X.