data/fields: ryoji ikeda

 

RYOJI IKEDA
data.scan, 2009, digital audio & video. computer, monitor, loudspeaker, wood plinth, 6 minute (loop)

data.scan is an audiovisual installation composed from a combination of pure mathematics and the vast sea of data present in the world. Each single pixel of the visual image is strictly calculated by mathematical principle. Visitors to the exhibition will experience the vast universe of data in the infinite between 0 and 1. As part of Ryoji Ikeda’s datamatics series of works, data.scan presents an audio-visual relationship relating to large sets of data from two recent meta-scientific investigations that have mapped the human body and the astronomical universe. The horizontal field of the monitor-based data.scan is registered intimately in relation to the viewer’s body. The dialogue of sound and image in data.scan addresses notions of randomness, extremities of scale, and binaries of the visible/audible and invisible/inaudible.This is the first gallery exhibition of Ikeda’s work in the DC area.

concept, composition: Ryoji Ikeda
programming: Tomonaga Tokuyama
commissioned by Surrey Art Gallery
co-produced by Forma

On view in Data/Fields, a new media exhibition in which the viewer/listener becomes another connection in the flow and transfer of data. The artworks presented act as hubs of sensory information—sites of signal, noise, presence, and absence.  The exhibition features works by five noted international artists, Caleb Coppock (U.S.), Mark Fell (U.K.), Andy Graydon (U.S./Germany), Ryoji Ikeda (Japan), France Jobin (Canada), and is curated by renowned sound artist Richard Chartier.

About the Artist

Japan’s leading electronic composer Ryoji Ikeda (b. 1966) focuses on the minutiae of ultrasonics, frequencies and the essential characteristics of sound itself. His work exploits sound’s physical property, its causality with human perception, and mathematical dianoia as music, time and space. Using computer and digital technology to the utmost limit, Ikeda has been developing particular “microscopic” methods for sound engineering and composition. Since 1995 he has been intensely active in sound art through concerts, installations and recordings: the albums +/- (1996), 0 degrees (1998) and Matrix (2000) have been hailed by critics as the most radical and innovative examples of contemporary electronic music. With Carsten Nicolai, he works the collaborative project ‘cyclo.’, which examines error structures and repetitive loops in software and computer programmed music, with audiovisual modules for real time sound visualization. The versatile range of his research is also demonstrated by the collaborations with choreographer William Forsythe/Frankfurt Ballett, contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, architect Toyo Ito and artist collective Dumb Type, among others. Ryoji Ikeda received the Golden Nica prize at Prix Ars Electronica 2001 in the Digital Music category.