Here is a demo video of my composition progress:

  • I like the beats and visuals I have so far, but I haven’t decided on a solid composition structure yet.
  • Also, I feel like the visuals are too boring and simple. I think I need to include something unexpected at some point in the composition to make it more interesting.

What I loved about this reading the most is Kurokawa’s approach to presenting his art. His content is very cohesive and well researched in all his projects but he curates his own pieces in a way that just looking at the artwork is an experience itself. He says he does not have synesthesia himself but he creates experiences keeping the principle in mind. He focuses on the implicit interactions that occur during an experience; the eyes seeing the beat of the music, the body feeling the vibrations of the light and the ears associating visuals with the sounds. I would imagine he would be really hard to work with for curators because he has such a strong vision for how his artwork is meant to be shown. But at the same time, I love his intentionality and direction. I really admire how he’s able to take the chaotic-ness of nature and our environment, and express it in its full abrasive glory while using simple interactions to immerse the audience in his world.

Sitting as an audience in the 3D in Ink. I was shocked at how particles of the liquid drops gather and disperse into flashing vapor until it gathers back to form the calligraphy characters standing in solid shape. Gather, disperse and formulate different routes of writing and shapes. 

The writer says that like the two hangers of coats left in his studio, “Kurokawa organizes his work according to two conceptual hangers: his most widely synaesthesia and the deconstruction of nature”. Different from how writers mix different senses as an expression, I’m really intrigued about how Kurokawa “sync” the visuals and audio together to create a satisfaction of matching and perfection of synchronization and yet going beyond patterns and comfort of being organized. In his “Octfall”, I feel fulfilled seeing when with a base drum beat and a glitch the visual switches from one screen to another, zooming in its size. There’s a sense of “oh wow” feeling running through my body as I see how the visual change and the audio change synchronize in a way that we don’t initially recognize. 

Kurokawa’s notion on “Deconstruction of nature” is like a disorientational feeling generated through the visual’s change and the defamiliarization of naturalistic objects, or concepts we touch in our everyday life. He leaves time of suspension, repetition and sudden shifts of the pace; it’s like the objects and the elements depicted in his pieces go through a transformation as the audio triggers the changes. I don’t really know how he builds up these changes, but just watching it, not even in real life, gives me an awing feeling. It feels like he’s tearing nature apart by distorting it a little, as he proceeds with a little twist one by one, it explodes into a different word. 

The precision involved in using tech to create art is so high. Having different software systems for trial, carrying cables through water vessels, I’m just envisioning the hardship of the installation with such a sophisticated art piece. It must be such a cool yet stressful job to handle these installations. 

The constant contrast between the development process of Kurokawa’s work to the work itself is an interesting look into the extent to which this work can be transformative. An isolated intimate space produces work that is farthest thing from isolated, works that stand in concert halls and museums for the masses. Work that is derived from nature, an unpredictable disordered scene, that turns into an organized orchestrated performance. These changes make me think of the different ways I can derive from my source of inspiration and surroundings, you can take it and recreate it or transform into to a work of complete contrast. An earlier reading talked about the importance of keeping live coding a field without a definition as to not constraint or try to dictate what it’s limits and possibilities are. The work described in this text further proved me the importance of such a choice. The tools Kurokawa used to create his work are varied from custom software and 3D modelling platforms to capturing nature itself such as his approach to Octfalls. There are endless possibilities to what you can use to create such installations and in turn there are endless possibilities to what messages you can send out or what emotions you can evoke through your work.

Looking into the process of creating and the space where an artist creates is also interesting and insightful. Another part of the reading that particularly stood out to me is when the writer was talking about the space is when they pointed out that the various softwares and set-ups used in the office to test out the works are a “nod to the technical variables at stake in each live performance-to the fact that things can go and have gone wrong in the past.” That realization that things even in the case of an established artist have gone wrong when dealing with technological performances is a really comforting fact that even at a higher level it takes time to perfect and build up your vision. The various set-ups are also a reminder of the importance of testing and understanding the possibilities that come with different technologies. And this careful testing across different laptops are also quiet complimentary to Kurokawa to create order out of disorder, where he takes the unpredictability of what might go wrong and orders it. This line felt like it was both a comfort to the possibilities of error and a reminder to the importance of testing and experimenting.