Humans have a natural instinct for macro and micro scales. See Rumi: “That I might behold an ocean in a drop of the water, a sun enclosed in a mote.” Kurokawa throws up the same prayer with his work. I started thinking about how the tools we use shape our conceptualizations of the nature of reality, how we cannot extricate the soul from the body (loosely related to synesthesia). Our visceral understanding of the configurations of nature became more quantitative – “Powers of Ten.” The presence of modern technology and scientific thought is strong. Rather than see man in God’s image, Eames noticed the planet as seen from a US-Russia-Space Race spaceship in a microscopic 1920s lab-possible cell. Despite the contextual distance, the spiritual epiphany is the same, and this is interesting to me.
Kurokawa’s disregard for the tools he uses was also interesting. Like in Powers of Ten, how we understand and what we create is shaped by the tools we use. I wanted to know more about what Kurokawa thinks about this relationship, the inherently mutually-constraining dynamic between his tools and what he creates. I get not being into tech-nostalgia (nostalgia has always seemed too navel-gazey for me). I don’t like my books because of the way they smell. I’ll read a pdf too. Just wanted to know more about this.
Even if he doesn’t care about the technology itself, and more about what kind of soul these devices can process and display, boy does he keep up just as fast as technology moves, huh? I was really interested in his setup. The iMac, the speakers, the mixing board, whatever the hell a “subwoofer” is, and the “X” where he can stand and scrutinize the total composition the way an audience in a theater will. I liked the idea of needing to move up close and back up, again and again. I really liked this “X.”
I also liked using “NASA topographic data to generate a video rendering of the Earth’s surface.” Just shows how many resources are at your disposal, if you can think of them. I also like how the reading mentions the sublime. I always thought of nature as an intelligent, subversive force. I also noted how Kurokawa uses a sketchbook to communicate ideas. It’s not all done on computers, but a lot of performance conceptualizations begin by being drawn by hand.
I also liked reading about the actual logistics that live performances take, like figuring out how to record a waterfall, or get your hands on dried insects, or balance 200 meters of cable in a historically old and valuable roof. Producing the live performance seems just as much as a live performance itself. I also never thought of films as pieces of audiovisual work, which they definitely are.
And mostly I feel like this reading was about tapping into something, and a brief insight into how Kurokawa taps in. What he taps into. Want to end on another Rumi quote I found while browsing for the first one: “Dost thou know why the mirror (of thy soul) reflects nothing? Because the rust is not cleared from its face.”