ZeroOne: Ryoji Ikeda presents Datamatics and C4I August 7, 2006

Ryoji Ikeda
North American Premiere of datamatics co-commissioned with the AV Festival
Ticket Price: $25
Performance Duration: 1 hr. 20 min. incl. intermission
Special Notes: Artist Reception to follow at Paragon Restaurant & Bar

Using pure data as a source for sound and visuals, Datamatics combines abstract and mimetic presentations of matter, time and space in a powerful and breathtakingly accomplished work.

Datamatics is the second audiovisual concert in Ryoji Ikeda's Datamatics series, an art project that explores the potential to perceive the invisible multi-substance of data that permeates our world.

Projecting dynamic, computer-generated imagery - in pared down black and white with striking colour accents, Ikeda’s intense yet minimal graphic renderings of data progress through multiple dimensions. From 2D sequences of patterns derived from hard drive errors and studies of software code, the imagery transforms into dramatic, rotating views of the universe in 3D, whilst the final scenes add a further dimension as four-dimensional mathematical processing opens up spectacular and seemingly infinite vistas.

A powerful and hypnotic soundtrack reflects the imagery through a meticulous layering of sonic components to produce immense and apparently boundless acoustic spaces.

Datamatics, alongside the recently released and critically acclaimed dataplex album, marks a significant and exciting progression in Ikeda’s work.

Produced by forma, www.forma.org.uk
Commissioned by AV Festival, www.avfest.co.uk and ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge and ISEA 2006. Supported by Arts Council England and the Japan Foundation through the Performing Arts JAPAN Program

C4I [live audiovisual performance]

C4I [2004- present] is both a concert and a film. The piece uses data as its material and theme to highlight the ways in which data shapes our understanding of the world.

C4I comprises of filmed footage fused with digital graphics, accompanied by a soundtrack mixed live by the artist, to create a constantly evolving work that is updated with each performance. Video images of landscapes are progressively abstracted into a language of data. Facts, figures and diagrams are used in a montage with dazzling graphic impact. Text excerpts, by writers such as Paul Virillo, Walter Benjamin and Alan Turing, elegantly punctuate the on-screen projections and the soundtrack synchronises perfectly with these graphical and video images.

Blurring the lines between nature, science and philosophy, the work subtly and hypnotically suggests the convergence of the real and the virtual.

In this highly atmospheric work, Ikeda strives for an aesthetic of pure data. Derived from the natural world, from global systems such as economics and from research mathematics, data forms a new material for the artist's explorations. C4I, in its meticulous composition and technical sophistication, reveals sublime views of reality in a work which is at once beautiful, poetic and political.

C4I is one of the first pieces in the Datamatics series and premiered at Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, Japan, in February 2004. Ikeda has since presented the work at venues and music festivals internationally including performances in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, UK and USA.

Produced by forma, www.forma.org.uk
Commissioned by Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), Japan, 2004
Supported by Arts Council England

Official Website: http://01sj.org/content/view/205/52/