ikeda
ryoji
nowness
Anatomy of an Artist: Ryoji Ikeda
Push the boundaries of perception in the audio-visual artist’s hypnotic data universe
For the second episode of Anatomy of an Artist, Japanese audio-visual artist Ryoji Ikeda invites the audience into his new immersive exhibition in London. 180 The Strand plays host to the largest European survey of Ryoji’s work in a self-titled show presented by The Vinyl Factory and Fact, in collaboration with Audemars Piguet Contemporary.
Alongside a collection of never-before-seen works, Ryoji debuts the third and final chapter of data-verse, a Studio Audemars Piguet commission and trilogy that he began work on in 2015. The exhibition is notably the first time the data-verse trilogy is displayed together as an immersive, triple-screen, sensory experience. It is a highly charged visual universe that is the culmination of two decades of research and technical prowess.
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“The entire exhibition is based on physical experience, not only intellectual content,” says the artist, providing a rare insight into his work. “It begins with works that give intense, very simple experiences, and then the works get more complicated, like the data-oriented projections such as data-verse.”
Ikeda’s work verses the infinite and materializes the imperceptible in staggering graphics that draw on particle physics, math, audio engineering, and molecular biology. Some examples being test pattern, which is the binary expression of sound as a convulsing barcode projection; and point of no return, which condenses the chaos of a black hole into a work of order and balance.
![](https://pedroskuster.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ryoji-ikeda-nowness-3.jpg)
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Through Ikeda’s process of unraveling immense data sets and codifying them for aesthetic consumption, the intense visual experiences of his work push the threshold of human perception; exposing the mind as nothing more than an electric switchboard of neurons that can be rewired, short-circuited, and—especially in the case of this solo show—blown.
Credits
Film by Lisa Rovner using footage and material by myself and Laima Leyton.
Words by Nowness
Full article and film https://www.nowness.com/series/anatomy-of-an-artist/ryoji-ikeda.
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