Been meaning to weigh in on Ryoji Ikeda since the trip to the Museum Of New and Old Art (MONA) earlier in the year. Data.Tron and Data.Matrix were the two audiovisual works on display, absolute standouts that consumed a massive space, with screens facing each other allowing you to get totally lost in his creations. With the release of his Supercodex album on Raster-Noton earlier this month, it seemed like a good idea to look a bit further in to his work.
Operating out of France, Ikeda is still considered to be the Japanese artist at the forefront of bringing sound and video together, based on the same source as opposed to making a soundtrack for a video or vice-versa. According to his biography:
Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.
The way we see it, Ikeda’s done some amazing work with data. Think artworks designed for wealthy War Games, Hackers and Tron fanboys on large quantities and you’re getting close to the aesthetic of Datamatics. As well as incorporating the above-two mentioned exhibits, Datamatics as a name covers Ikeda’s ongoing exploration of data as pure source sound and visual.
Check Data.Tron in it’s MONA format below.
via Ryoji Ikeda
data.tron is part of the datamatics project, which is a series of experiments that explore such questions, physically and mathematically. Visitors will experience the vast universe of data in the infinite between 0 and 1.
data.tron is an audiovisual installation, where each single pixel of visual image is strictly calculated by mathematical principle, composed from a combination of pure mathematics and the vast sea of data present in the world. These images are projected onto a large screen, heightening and intensifying the viewer’s perception and total immersion within the work.
Much like Chairman Kato’s Purgatory installation that we spoke about last week, Datamatics as a whole is made up of one core idea that can be culminated in to pieces spread across the world, pulled together on one big screen or even developed as an individual live performance. You may have some Data.tron on it’s own as a 24 x 6 x 12m wall, as a single screen or four, as an element of a larger recorded project online or built in to the floor of museum.
As a concert, an installation, a CD release, a published work or a sound project – there’s an ever growing number of elements that can be drawn upon, approaching briefs like a tradesman with a full ute of tools. No matter what media you pull down it down on, it’s something to be experienced not talked about. Check it out when it comes to town, and for the meantime there’s a couple of small trailers below, showing off some of the tools in the kit.