Ryoji Ikeda - datamatics [prototype-ver.2.0]

(All photos from: www.ryojiikeda.com)

Saturday night Alex and I went to see Ryoji Ikeda’s performance of datamatics [prototype-ver.2.0.] at the French Institute. It’s part of their Fall Festival, they have lots of great events going on - not just french lessons!

The performance was really moving. I know how to appreciate contemporary art, how to analyze it, how to listen to it. But often times I find myself loving a work of art because of it’s concept, because I usually don’t feel anything. But this piece made me feel unimportant, and ominous at the same time. I can talk about what Ikeda was doing, but I think what was important to me was that he was able to harness a somewhat sterile medium and create a piece that reflected the vastness of the universe and the microcosms that make it up. His use of data from chromosomes and astronomical charts contrast each other, but you can easily get lost in his visuals as well. Charts and text are used to create patterns while staying true to the data. Audio that is mapped to the images (not sure if it was mickey mousing, or if the audio was triggering the images or vice versa) do not come off cheesy, but enhance the performance’s feeling of space.

One of the sponsors of this piece is Recombinant Media Labs, who I worked with during my time at UCSD curating Recombinant Serendipity (a name which clearly paid homage to them.)  I would’ve loved to see this piece performed as part of that event, as I think it portrays successfully what many people are trying to accomplish in audiovisual performances.

Click thru for more screenshots of the visuals.