0/r is Nosei Sakata (*0) and Richard Chartier. Varied is the follow up to 1999's highly sought after self titled release 0/r ((12k1006), recently noted in Computer Music Journal essay "The Aesthetics of Failure: Post-Digital Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music" by Kim Cascone (MIT Press, USA) in its discography of resources for listening). While 0/r suggested a sense of chaos with its jarring and syncopated digital sound, Varied utilizes much more refined compositional techniques to create highly deliberate passages of whispering sine waves, extreme frequencies, and looping rhythms of noise and detailed sonic pops.

Nosei Sakata, who records under the moniker *0, is from Tokyo, Japan. He is part of the new wave of japanese minimalists exploring computerized anti-music and the conceptual aspect of implied silence. *0 means "multiplied by zero" hence all answers to such a calculation are zero, and as a result *0 means "nothing". The main concept of *0's works centers around the Japanese thought of "mu"(nothing)... creating all things from an implied nothing.

Richard Chartier, minimal sound artist/composer and graphic designer, has recorded critically acclaimed recordings for Trente Oiseaux (Germany), LINE (USA), Meme (Japan), Fallt (Ireland), as well collaborative works with Nosei Sakata (*0) and Taylor Deupree on 12k (USA) and has been featured on a number of international compilations including last year's comprehensive Clicks & Cuts 2 (Mille Plateaux, Germany). For his cd Series, Chartier was awarded one of twelve Honorable Mentions in the category of Digital Music by the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica, 2001 (Linz, Austria). This work is also being exhibited in the Whitney Biennial 2002 at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY) March-May 2002. Chartier's work explores the relationship between sound, silence and the act of listening. With Taylor Deupree, he founded the recording label LINE, as a subdivision of 12k focusing new, digital, conceptual, minimalist sound art.