Kanazawa_museum_20031018
- 18 years ago
Digital Kakejiku-
The theme of Hasegawa's own artistic project, entitled 'Digital Kakejiku' (or D-K), is the perception of that interval. Over three
nights in April 2003, Hasegawa projected a series of unrelated abstract pictures (all previously created by him with a computer) onto the exterior surfaces of Kanazawa Castle, complemented by music from composer Ryoji Ikeda piped through thirty speakers distributed across the castle grounds - the intent was to totally immerse the audience.
Although the images were changed at one-minute intervals, there were no abrupt transitions. They were smoothly blended into one another by a computer constantly calculating the intervening states and updating the projection. The source images were lost in the flux, merging into a single seamless animation. There was no goal, no evolution, no climax. The beginning and end moments were arbitrary. The gradual movement was barely noticeable. At a glance, it seemed perfectly still, but look away for a minute, and it would be totally transformed.
The Kanazawa Castle installation was the first major D-K event, repeated in October at the construction site of Kanazawa's 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa). Several other D-K installations have been realized or are in planning, but Hasegawa has been developing the technique itself for a decade. His early experiments used computer monitors, and later shifted to video projectors. Hasegawa sees D-K as an architectural material, able to actively engage and transform any context, applicable at scales ranging from urban event to computer screensaver. It is practically impossible to freeze-frame exactly the same image twice, and the possibilities of infinite variation have already attracted wide attention: D-K images have been commissioned to convert identical, mass-produced items into unique artifacts, from Mitsubishi Bank credit cards to Issey Miyake fabrics to the billboards at the Nagano Winter Olympics.
The theme of Hasegawa's own artistic project, entitled 'Digital Kakejiku' (or D-K), is the perception of that interval. Over three
nights in April 2003, Hasegawa projected a series of unrelated abstract pictures (all previously created by him with a computer) onto the exterior surfaces of Kanazawa Castle, complemented by music from composer Ryoji Ikeda piped through thirty speakers distributed across the castle grounds - the intent was to totally immerse the audience.
Although the images were changed at one-minute intervals, there were no abrupt transitions. They were smoothly blended into one another by a computer constantly calculating the intervening states and updating the projection. The source images were lost in the flux, merging into a single seamless animation. There was no goal, no evolution, no climax. The beginning and end moments were arbitrary. The gradual movement was barely noticeable. At a glance, it seemed perfectly still, but look away for a minute, and it would be totally transformed.
The Kanazawa Castle installation was the first major D-K event, repeated in October at the construction site of Kanazawa's 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa). Several other D-K installations have been realized or are in planning, but Hasegawa has been developing the technique itself for a decade. His early experiments used computer monitors, and later shifted to video projectors. Hasegawa sees D-K as an architectural material, able to actively engage and transform any context, applicable at scales ranging from urban event to computer screensaver. It is practically impossible to freeze-frame exactly the same image twice, and the possibilities of infinite variation have already attracted wide attention: D-K images have been commissioned to convert identical, mass-produced items into unique artifacts, from Mitsubishi Bank credit cards to Issey Miyake fabrics to the billboards at the Nagano Winter Olympics.