datum

Pioneering video work utilizing symmetric handling of space, color and time integrated in high-dimensional space. Taking each pixel as a point with coordinates of X, Y (space), R, G, B (color) and T (time), an image’s pixels can be seen as an array of points in six-dimensional space. Adding rotation makes conversions between color gradation, curves and time changes, collapsing them yet preserving inter-point correspondences, and at 0° the original image is restored. The concept for the newest piece (as of February 2018) emerged in a project from a 2016 residency at the University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Studies’ KAVLI Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU), where the word “dimension” was the theme for dialogues with researchers in string theory, elementary particle theory, and theoretical physics. Uses time-lapse imagery from near the ALMA telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

A concept, original and with a sense of universality, refined through dialogues with others—leading-edge mathematicians and physicists no less… Solid technique with which to realize the concept… Expression of the technique with impact so overwhelming as to be scarcely intelligible… Add to all this the fact that while a very high level has been attained with each of these pieces already, a sense of further possibility pervades the work. This is why it merited the Excellence Award. If we, as viewers, discern wonder or beauty in the dynamic imagery derived from the work’s (literal) “dimensionality,” just what can that “beauty” be understood to represent? How might it relate to nature, to outer space, to (terrestrial or extraterrestrial) life and its evolution? This is a work that opens the viewer’s eyes to such questions. It is, in that sense, a true work of art. (AKIBA Fuminori)