Ryoji Ikeda's massive installations spanning the two DHC ART sites are an opus on the analysis, representation and interpretation of data. The primary medium used by Ikeda in this series is light; one part video projection and one part illumination of plastic and filmstrip transparency. Several of the datasets represented consist of cosmic maps and information relating to the sequence of DNA, I did not recognise the majority though; their contents are not made explicit and so the data exists without context, as an abstraction removed from the phenomena which it was created to describe. Ikeda is also a composer of music, a clicking, pulsing electronic score accompanies the video projection of the data, which runs about 8 minutes. Through the context of the gallery and the "curation" of the data and re-presentation as a film clip, Ikeda disembodies the raw data and projects it into the realm of aesthetics, where it becomes form and experience, information itself interpreted as art.
DHC/ART: Ryoji Ikeda (English) from DHC/ART on Vimeo.