Ryoji Ikeda: data.tron/data.scan
Infinite Egress
September 26 – December 13, 2009
13750 – 88 Avenue
Surrey, British Columbia
Canada V3W 3L1
604-501-5566
Ryoji Ikeda: data.tron/data.scan
September 26 to December 13, 2009
How many points are there in a line?
What is the number of numbers?
How can we verify that the random is random?
Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda exhibits two works from his datamatics project, a series of experiments that explore such questions, physically and mathematically.
data.tron and data.scan are audiovisual installations composed from a combination of pure mathematics and the vast sea of data present in the world. In both works, 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.
data.tron and data.scan present audio-visual relationships relating to large sets of data from two recent meta-scientific investigations that have mapped the human body and the astronomical universe. The large scale vertical projection of data.tron heightens and intensifies the viewer’s perception and total immersion within the work, while the horizontal monitor-based data.scan is registered more intimately in relation to the viewer’s body. The dialogue of sound and image between data.tron and data.scan address notions of randomness, extremities of scale, and binaries of the visible/audible and invisible/inaudible.
The exhibition is produced in conjunction with the 10th Anniversary of the Surrey Art Gallery’s TechLab digital art residency and exhibition program. The TechLab has incorporated close to 40 exhibitions, projects and residencies of leading edge contemporary digital media art over the past decade. In conjunction with the Surrey Art Gallery’s larger program featuring more traditional media, TechLab has presented projects that have ranged from telerobotic sculpture to interactive virtual environments, GPS drawing to artificial intelligence and social networking systems.
Ryoji Ikeda: data.tron/data.scan represents the world premiere of data.scan and the Canadian premiere of data.tron.
data.scan is co-produced by Surrey Art Gallery and Forma ( forma.org.uk ).
data.tron is co-produced by Le Fresnoy studio national des arts contemporains and Forma.
Also featured:
Infinite Egress
Artworks by David Dyment & Roula Partheniou, Babak Golkar, Robert Kleyn, Lucy Pullen, and Robert Smithson.
September 26 to December 13, 2009
Considered by many to be the ultimate abstract concept, the infinite has compelled many modern and contemporary artists to try to capture its essence and relate its central meanings to modern life. Infinite Egress presents artwork from two recent moments of heightened interest in the infinite: the beginning of the 1970s and the last half of our own decade. Both moments represent a departure from a grandiose sculptural approach and geometric graphical paradoxes common to modernist representations of the infinite. Borrowing from visual languages associated with fashion and commercial display, entertainment and spectacle, spirituality and transcendental experience, optics and architecture, the artworks presented here consider the concept of infinity in relation to the body and its relationship to space. Infinite Egress—egress meaning here to depart, to emerge—considers metaphors of unending and limitlessness with an often wry sense of humour and awareness of our contemporary media-saturated environment.
Ryoji Ikeda: data.tron/data.scan and Infinite Egress are curated by Jordan Strom, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Surrey Art Gallery. Both exhibitions coincide with the openings of two other exhibitions: Optic Ear, featuring artworks by Norman McLaren, Steina and Woody Vasulka and Elizabeth Vander Zaag, which consider the legacy of Op art through early 1970s experimental film, video and computer graphics and Arcade, featuring artworks by Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Fine Art faculty.
Surrey Art Gallery
13750 – 88 Avenue
Surrey, British Columbia
Canada V3W 3L1
604-501-5566
For media inquires contact:
Angela Cachay Dwyer, Publicist
amcachay@surrey.ca
604-501-5189
