is a German artist, musician and label owner. As a musician he is known under the pseudonym Alva Noto.
Carsten Nicolai was born in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) of Saxony, GDR in 1965. He studied architecture and landscape design before pursuing art. In 1994 he founded the label NOTON, following which a collaboration with RasterMusic began and by 1999 the two labels had merged into Raster-Noton, which operated until 2017. Returning to the labels origin in 2017, Nicolai runs NOTON separately.
In 2009 Nicolai wrote the opera Sparkie: Cage and Beyond in collaboration with Michael Nyman.
Nicolai performed and created installations in many of the world's most prestigious spaces including the Guggenheim, New York, the SF MoMA, Modern Art Oxford, NTT Tokyo, Tate Modern and Venice Biennale, Italy. As a member (and co-founder) of the Raster-Noton label he was responsible for the acclaimed CD series 20 to 2000 that went on to win the Golden Nica prize at Prix Ars Electronica, 2000.
Carsten Nicolai also works as a visual artist. In 2013, Nicolai participated as a visual artist in Biennale Documenta, an official collateral show of the 55th Venice Biennale of Art.
Nicolai started his professorship in art with focus on digital and time-based media with Dresden Academy of Fine Arts since 2015.
Nicolai scored the music for Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant. The score was nominated for a Golden Globe, BAFTA, Grammy and Critics' Choice Movie Awards. In 2018 he created the sound design for Iñárritu’s groundbreaking VR project "Carne y Arena" Flesh and Sand.
