SITUATION #9

Ryoichi Kurokawa’s visual language presents us with an exploded view of the natural world, analysed and recreated digitally by what seems to be a tireless algorithmic vision device. We are taken into the inside of a digital imaging system – is it a computer vision program? Maybe a depth or thermal camera? A tracking script used with surveillance cameras or are we part of a drone vision system? – and we are given the chance to see with its ‘eyes’. As the video unfolds, pieces of images are constantly re-assembled and moved, data is endlessly analyzed and connected, points and pixels manipulated in a constant tension between the creation and destruction of visual representation. The machine almost seems to learn to see, at times frenetically and desperately searching for the construction of an image (a blurry representation of a flamingo mutates into an eagle, which then dissolves into an abstract network of lines and dots). This journey into the aesthetics of the digitally mediated vision, and the never-ending ‘searching’ of the machine, leaves us wondering about the intentions of such a search and of the ominous possibilities of the digital gaze.

Sirens is a collaboration between Ryoichi Kurokawa and Novi_sad.

More by Ryoichi Kurokawa: ryoichikurokawa.com

Kindly supported by Ringier AG.